


Knock Knock

by terminallybored



Series: Children of the Nemeton [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Averted Character Death, BAMF Stiles, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, Horror, Humor, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Playing fast and loose with car machenics, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Urban Legends, black eyed kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-05-30 03:28:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15088010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terminallybored/pseuds/terminallybored
Summary: It's not that kids don't play pranks in Beacon Hills. They've just gotten more careful about playing them after dark. So when someone starts playing some pro-level Ding Dong Ditch with Stiles' door, always after the sun goes down, he's pretty sure it's not the neighborhood kids.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story makes references to the previous story in the series, _Smoke and Mirrors_. Some parts may not make sense if you haven't read that one.

Stiles gives his room a final once-over that’s actually a fifth-time-over (which doesn’t have a nice, concise-sounding name). He’s pretty well wrecked the place in his search and no, his medieval literature book is absolutely not among the spoils. He sighs, counting the spines of the textbooks on the corner of his desk one last, futile time and… yep. Still short one.

Third goddamn time this month.

Stiles grabs his phone and flops back on his bed, loose notes and handouts crunching under him, which he ignores. He’s not so green at this school thing that he’s gone back to caring about keeping the syllabus pristine. Just green enough, apparently, to have gone back to having absolute shit time management. And equipment management.

[Did I leave a book at your place? -SS]

The answer comes fast enough that he knows Derek was waiting for his text. And it’s a photo. A photo of Stiles’ textbook sitting on top of today’s newspaper with the date clearly showing. There’s a sticky note on the cover: _Bring lube to pay ransom_

Stiles snorts and laughs at his empty room. Just sending photos is still kind of new for Derek, never mind an actual sense of humor. Not that Derek hasn’t always had a sense of humor, it’s just been hard to translate it into other mediums. People give Stiles weird looks when he tries to tell them that Derek is actually pretty funny in a Derek sort of way.

[How long have you been waiting to send me that? -SS]

[2 hours. It’s funnier if you ask first. -DH]

[Look at you, concerned about your comedic timing. I’m so proud. -SS]

[Did you read the note? -DH]

Stiles rolls his eyes and looks at the clock on the nightstand, making a face at the numbers there. He’s starting to hate that thing. It’s going faster when he stops looking, Stiles is sure of it.

[It’s already past 8 and I need that book for homework I have due tomorrow. -SS]

[So bring your computer and stay the night. -DH]

Temptation, thy name is Derek Hale. Stiles drums the edge of his mattress with his heels, fighting the urge to throw his stuff into his backpack and do exactly what Derek suggested.

[Can’t. I need to do homework for my Thursday classes too and all my stuff is here. -SS]

Stiles’ libido isn’t quite neglected enough to make him drag thirty-five pounds of textbooks and a laptop around with him everywhere. Yet. It’s getting dangerously close, but he’s holding out.

‘Good study habits, Stilinski,’ he tells himself firmly as he very deliberately leaves his laptop on his desk and grabs nothing but the keys to his Jeep. He will get his book and come home and do his homework, like a responsible student.

 

* * *

 

Stiles’ resolve is trying to collapse in on itself by the time the elevator reaches the top floor of Derek’s building. The parking lot feels like it’s a million miles away and the keys hang in his pocket like a ball and chain. Except in his pocket, where they wouldn’t be much of a hindrance to any sort of escape or anything, but-

The elevator buzzes at him, short and abrasive, to remind him that he’s standing on the threshold with the door ajar. Stiles shakes himself out of trying to produce quality similes and steps off the elevator. He grabs the door latch and finds it unlocked, rolling it open and letting yellow light spill into the hallway.

“Hey Derek,” he calls, stepping inside the loft. The air is warm and smells savory and slightly like garlic. He turns and slides the door shut behind him, opening his mouth to ask Derek if he actually cooked. A heavy weight crushes into him from behind, shoving him into the metal door so hard that it reverberates against his chest and knocks the wind out of him. There’s a nose and then an open mouth assaulting the side of his neck and… yep, he’s definitely being poked around the haunches.

“Hey, man.” Stiles reaches over his shoulder and finds Derek’s hair, burying his fingers in it. “Missed me, huh?”

“You haven’t been here since last Monday,” Derek says, words half muffled by Stiles’ neck and growled out along with a renewal to that pushing and pinning to the metal door. Stiles can only assume Derek expects he’s going to sprint the second he has breathing room.

“Has it really been that long?” Stiles asks, kind of amazed. Sure, his dick thinks that sounds absolutely correct, but his dick is not a reliable method for telling time when it comes to Derek. “No way, I was here when I forgot my laptop over the weekend.”

Derek growls louder against his neck. “That was _last_ weekend.”

Stiles tips his head further to one side when he feels Derek grabbing his hair and pulling it, looking for more real estate for his mouth. It gives him a few minutes to count backwards in his head and… shit. “Shit. That was last weekend, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Stiles groans and hits his forehead against the metal door. “I’m sorry. It’s fucking hard getting back into school again. Why did I take that semester off? How did I get this bad at school in one semester?”

Stiles feels the mouth on his neck pause while Derek has his internal struggle and makes a frustrated sigh as he suppresses his lizard brain to try to meet Stiles’ pesky emotional needs. “You’re not bad at school. College is different than high school.”

“It’s community college.”

Derek pokes him hard in the ribs, like he usually does when Stiles uses that tone when he says ‘community college.’ The one that implies it’s not real. “It’s still college and it’s still more work. And a different kind of class schedule.”

Stiles turns to lean his back against the door now that Derek isn’t actively pinning him, sighing out a frustrated breath. “I guess. Still feels like I should have my shit together more by now.”

“You always feel like you should have your shit together.” Derek digs his fingers back into Stiles’ hair and smooths it away from his forehead, making Stiles wonder exactly how much a wreck he showed up looking. Probably plenty of one. “When are you allowed to have it all scattered around?”

“That’s… a really good question.”

Derek hums some sort of agreement and leaves Stiles at the door to grab the waiting textbook from the bedside table. He stands right back in Stiles’ space again as he offers it back to him. The sticky note is still clinging to the cover, beginning to curl at the edges a little.

“I… didn’t bring any of my stuff,” he admits.

“I noticed.”

“So I have to go back home,” Stiles says, toying with the raised edge of the Post-It.

The edge of Derek’s mouth quirks a little. “Yes, I assumed you would need to go back to where all of your stuff is. It’s fine, Stile.”

Stiles likes the idea of getting back in his Jeep and going home even less than he did on his way over here, which is saying something. “I mean, I have to go home eventually. Not like… right now.” He’s barely made up his own mind when he’s dropping the book, which hits the cement floor with a clap that echoes off the ceiling, and launching himself at Derek.

“You’re going to… be up all night,” Derek groans, which doesn’t really work as a protest when he’s already grabbing at the zipper on the hoodie to yank it down.

“Promises, promises,” Stiles mumbles against the strong muscles of Derek’s neck as he shoves his hands under his shirt, fingers curling against the hard plane of abdominal muscles. Good lord, how did he go a week without this and not lose his mind?

“You’re going to have to just move in if you ever plan to sleep and study in the same trip.”

Stiles hears another zipper slide open before he’s yanked towards the bed.

 

* * *

 

Stiles scrubs a hand through his sex-messy hair, trying to make tame down the ‘sex’ part of it, but to no avail. It’s already past 10, so he doesn’t mess with it long. He has a very strict agenda right now.

“Okay,” he tells his reflection in his rear-view mirror, adjusting the collar of his shirt to hide the worst of the hickies. “First, we are going into this gas station and we are getting coffee. A very, very large cup of coffee. Second, we are going home and we are going to do homework. No excuses, or we won’t be able to have these two-hour breaks anymore.” He gives himself a very stern look, even though he knows the guy across from him is full of shit when it comes to enforcing dick bans. “I mean it. We can’t just go moving in with Derek for the sake of sex. Well, sex and maybe that British ice cream dessert he buys. Even though he… kind of implied that we could…” Stiles shakes his head. Clearly his brain has been fucked right out of study mode and he really thinks he’s having a conversation here. “Okay, coffee. Now.”

The gas station is quiet and almost empty at this hour on a weeknight. Just Stiles and one lone dude behind the register with his dirty Vans kicked up on the counter as he watches something his phone. The coffee in the pot smells burnt and kind of acrid, which is fine. This is not coffee for sipping. This is his lembas bread for the journey into Mordor. He does add just enough sugar to temper the bitter smell of it, though, then heads to the counter. He only gets sidetracked once (gummy bears), which is pretty good for him.

“If someone says you should move in with them, but they kind of say it like it’s a joke, and they’re really horny at the time, is that like… a genuine offer?” Stiles asks the guy who’s trying to ring up his stuff without actually looking away from his phone.

“$3.42.”

“I feel like moving in with someone is like marrying them. Heads should be totally clear when the offer is made.” Stiles digs a five dollar bill from his wallet. “No interference by drugs, alcohol, or testosterone.”

The guy hands him his change and kicks his feet back up on the counter.

“I’m glad we had this chat. Thanks.” Stiles grabs his coffee and stuffs the bag of gummy bears into his pocket before heading back outside.

The parking lot is darker than he remembers. When the door of the gas station swings shut behind him and the hum of the fluorescent lights vanishes, the silence grates on Stiles’ ears. No one is filling up at the pumps. No cars are passing by. Even the crickets are being silent. Unnerved, Stiles digs in his pocket for his keys.

Footsteps.

Stiles looks up. Still no cars in the small parking lot. Across from the shallow pools of yellow from the streetlights and two lanes of asphalt is a thick line of trees. It goes on for miles. So does the road. Who’s walking on the road at this time of night? Stiles digs around more frantically for his keys, hearing a jingle that sounds very far away. His fingers close around cold metal and he yanks them free as two thin shapes begin to form in the lamplight at the edge of the parking lot. The footsteps get louder.

Stiles practically vaults into his Jeep and starts the engine. He barely remembers to set his coffee down before he shifts into reverse. Footsteps. He can still hear them, even over the grumble of Roscoe’s engine. That doesn’t seem right. Stiles doesn’t try to rationalize it. Not when his pulse is pounding like it is.

He grabs the gear shift and shoves it into reverse and takes one quick look over his shoulder. The parking lot behind his brake lights is tinted red. There’s nothing there. No one. The footsteps have stopped.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Stiles startles so hard that he lets his foot off the brake slightly as he turns to face forward again, letting the Jeep slip back several inches before he catches it. Jamming his foot back on the brake, the car rocks forward under him as he looks around. In front of him is empty. There’s no one outside his window.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Stiles turns slowly towards the passenger door. The person there lowers a pale finger from tapping on the glass. Girl, maybe? Long hair on guys is kind of out right now. He can’t see much of the kid’s face. The head is tilted down, like she’s looking at her feet. Or maybe at the empty passenger seat. Dark hair. Pale chin. Some sort of oversized coat that hangs off her shoulders. It makes Stiles think of a scarecrow. His heart pounds harder.

She raises her finger again. Chipped black nail polish. Probably a girl.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Stiles shakes himself from his fear-stupor. It’s just some kid. Out alone in the middle of the night on a weeknight, which is weird, sure. But just a kid. Stiles forces a breath into his chest and leans over. His hand hovers at the lock on the door. He changes his mind and grabs the handle to the window, rolling it down a few inches.

“Uh… hi. What’s up?”

“Hello.” Girl. Definitely a girl. She doesn’t look up at him. Or say anything else.

“Uh… are you okay?” Stiles asks, trying to ignore the way his stomach is churning. “It’s… kinda late and all. What are you doing here?” And how did you get to my car so fucking fast without running? Stiles doesn’t ask that one. Seems rude. But he’s still freaked the hell out by it.

“We need a ride.”

“We?” Stiles cranes his neck and notices a second kid behind her. Short hair, maybe a boy? It’s hard to tell because he’s looking down too. Stiles can only see the pale curve of his chin from his vantage point. He’s just standing there, beside the girl. Slightly behind her, just far enough to be out of view unless Stiles leans way over. “Uh… are you guys lost?”

“We need a ride,” the girl repeats. “We want to go to the library.”

“The library is closed, guys,” Stiles says, sitting back up in his seat. The boy doesn’t move, which is disconcerting. Stiles finds himself staring too hard, waiting for some sign that he’s real.

“We need to go to the library. Our parents said we could go.” The girl’s voice is so… flat. Not a single word has changed in tone. Like she’s a recording.

“Okay, uh… look, go inside and call your parents, okay? The library is closed, you can’t go right now.” Stiles feels his pulse beating against his neck and he doesn’t know why. The kids are just… weird. That’s all.

“Just let us in and take us to the library,” the girl says. “Our parents will be angry if we don’t go.”

“The library is closed,” Stiles repeats, for all the good it does.

The boy steps forward. Stiles sees his head come into view of the window, about even with the girl’s shoulder.

“Let us in.” The voice is a boy’s voice. But it might as well be the girl’s. Same tone. Same flatness. Stiles hears the sound of fingers settling on the door handle outside. “Take us to the library.”

Stiles cranes back against the door, looking between the boy and the door lock. Everything inside him screams at him to get away. Peel out of the parking lot and get as far away as humanly possible. But he looks at the door lock again.

“You need to let us in.”

Stiles doesn’t know why he begins to lean towards the passenger door. He needs to leave. Now. Run. He reaches over for the lock.

The hand he has braced on the center console slips. His hand crushes the flimsy plastic lid and makes the coffee slosh up over his hand.

“Ffffuck!” Droplets of coffee fly everywhere in the interior of the car as he shakes his hand off, trying to get away from the scalding sensation. Hot. Bad. Burning. Stiles’ lizard brain is firmly in control.

The girl lifts a finger again.

_Tap._

Bad. Danger. Move. Stiles doesn’t hesitate this time. He jams his foot down on the gas, making Roscoe jolt backwards. Coffee sloshes out of the ruined cup and Stiles doesn’t care. The tires squeal as he turns the Jeep. The headlights swipe over… nothing. The kids are gone.

Stiles swivels his head around, giving the parking lot a once-over, but it’s empty. Heart still pounding, he quickly decides he doesn’t care, throws the car in drive, and peels out of the parking lot.

 

* * *

 

“Am I like, the worst Sheriff’s kid in the world?” Stiles asks, trying to mop the ice-cold coffee out of the cup holder with a wad of paper towels. “I mean, kids in a gas station parking lot and my first instinct it to book it and almost run them over?”

“I dunno,” Scott’s voice says from the dashboard where Stiles left his phone. “I mean, out all alone in the part of town on a weeknight? Probably drugs or something.”

Stiles prods the carpets on the driver’s side with distaste. He grabbed his book and ran inside like something was chasing him the night before. Crushed cup of coffee and massive coffee spill were all left to fester overnight until the sun came out and made everything feel safe again. The trade-off being that his whole car smells like burnt, bitter coffee now. “One of ‘em seemed kind of young for drugs. I mean… it was hard to get a bead on either of them, really.”

“Kids start younger these days. That’s what my dad says.”

“Are you sure he was talking about drugs?” Stiles pulls the floor mat free and tosses it onto the driveway. It hits the pavement with a soggy slap. A few douses with the hose are probably in order.

Scott sighs on the phone. “I dunno, Stiles. Maybe. But you were fine not to let weird kids into your car.”

Stiles takes the subtle hint that Scott is over it. That happens more quickly these days, but it’s not surprising. “Right. You’re right, man. So… wanna maybe hang out sometime? I had kind of an interesting talk with Derek last night and-”

“I’m kinda busy. Maybe next weekend.”

Stiles isn’t surprised. “Alright. See you, Scott.” He grabs his phone and ends the call, sitting back in his driver’s seat and looking at the ceiling of his car. The coffee smell is stifling.

 

* * *

 

Stiles scrubs at his eyes and debates moving his study session to the couch. Except that’s a horrible idea because sitting up at his desk will keep him awake and functional where the couch will envelope him in cushions and put him to sleep. He grabs his phone from the foot of his bed.

Derek picks up on the first ring. “What?”

Stiles snorts “Well that was super cheerful. Was that just for me or are you in a specific bad mood?”

“It’s late. That usually means something horrible has happened,” Derek points out.

“Oh come on, it does not!” Stiles protests. “I’m way better at calling you for non-emergency reasons these days. Not for small talk, though, but that’s on you because all you do is grunt at me.”

“Stiles.”

Stiles sighs dramatically. “Nothing is wrong. Sheesh. I just need you to keep me awake.”

“Why?”

“Homework. Why else?”

Derek pauses on the other end of the phone. “Did you forget that tomorrow is Saturday? Go to bed.”

“No, I just… figured I could do most of my homework right now and then tomorrow I could hang out at your place. Maybe take-out and Netflix?”

“Is that a euphamism?”

Stiles snorts. “No. I mean, sex is totally happening, but I wouldn’t say no to Chinese first.”

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

“That actually sounds really nice,” Derek says.

“Great! And maybe we could… y’know, go grab breakfast on Sunday.” Stiles adds. He knows he tries way too hard to keep his voice casual by the way Derek immediately falls silent on the other end. “Just a suggestion.”

“You’ve never wanted to go get breakfast. What does that even mean?” Oh god, Derek is frowning. Stiles can hear his forehead crinkling through the phone. “Like… a diner? Going through the drive-thru at McDonalds?”

“We’ve gone through drive-thrus before! What’s so weird about that?”

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

“Nothing, you’ve just never said that before.”

Stiles rubs his forehead. “Oh my god, fine. Forget I asked. We should never get breakfast, ever. Happy?”

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Stiles blinks and holds his phone away from his ear listening to the sounds of the house without a werewolf getting pissy in his ear (which sounds grosser than it is). The hum of his laptop motor. The very faint ticking of the clock in the kitchen if he listens hard enough.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

“Stiles!” Derek growls just as Stiles puts his phone back to his ear, making him wince and pull it right back again.

“Hang on, I think someone is at the door,” Stiles says, voice maybe a little more… brusque than he means it to be, but whatever. Derek is being so super weird. “I’ll call you back later.” He hangs up the phone before Derek can argue or do it first.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Stiles shoves back from his desk, eyeing the numbers glowing on the digital clock on his nightstand. Who the hell is here past 11? He doubts it’s Scott suddenly wanting to hang out. Liam would text him first. He jogs down the stairs even as he runs through his mental Rolodex of people he knows and reasons they wouldn’t be at his door at this hour.

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

The sound is louder than it was from all the way in his bedroom, and now proper knocking and not a distant tapping. Stiles is about to call out that he’s coming, but he stops on the bottom step. His teeth dig into his bottom lip as he looks at the door. Waits. The clock in the kitchen ticks off the seconds.

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

The sound is unhurried. Steady. Not the sound of someone who’s been standing outside knocking for so long.

‘Mr. Brightside’ begins playing, up the stairs and around the corner. The sound startles Stiles out of his reverie. He can picture his phone lighting up with Derek’s picture, glowy eyes and all, on the screen. He hurries to the door and peers out the peephole. The glass distorts the porch outside, makes it look like there’s a wide curve to what’s completely straight. The yellow bulb outside lights up the patch in front of the door, with only the edges vanishing into shadows.

Empty.

Stiles reaches for the doorknob, gets as far as setting his hand on it. The music upstairs stops playing as the call goes to voicemail. The house falls silent again, aside from the tick-tick-tick of the clock.

‘Mr. Brightside’ begins playing again. Stiles swears under his breath and leans in for one more look out the peephole. Just the empty porch. He glances at the deadbolt before turning and sprinting up the stairs.

“Dude, I said I’d call you back,” Stiles says when he picks up the phone.

“Who the hell is at your house at this hour?” Derek says, with that mix of irritation and relief that he does so well in his voice. “It’s almost midnight.”

“It was no one.” Stiles sits back down at his desk ad tries to pick his place back up in his textbook.

“Was it Scott?”

“No. Derek, it was literally no one. Porch was empty.”

Derek makes that sound he makes when he doesn’t like something. “You didn’t open the door, right?”

“Sheriff’s kid,” Stiles says, fishing his pen out from under his notes. “Of course I didn’t open the door for an empty porch. It’s almost midnight and I’m home alone and not expecting anyone.”

“Good.”

“Good. So can I go back to my homework now?”

Derek hangs up instead of answering. Stiles rolls his eyes and reminds himself that he kind of signed up for this.

 

* * *

 

The house is dark and quiet. The sort of quiet that means no one else is home, and any stray noises… well, they aren’t coming from another human. Stiles flops onto his back to stare at his ceiling because obviously his brain hates him and is going to plague him with unsettling thoughts tonight. That happens way too often when his dad is working nights. Stiles vaguely wonders if that ever happens to his dad when Stiles stays over at Derek’s loft.

Ugh. He doesn’t want to think of Derek right now. Stiles viciously punches his pillow into a better shape as his flops back onto his side. Asshole werewolf. Stiles resolutely shuts his eyes. He will absolutely not think about Derek and he will go to sleep. Because he still has some homework to finish up in the morning if he wants to veg out at Derek’s place for most of the weekend. For some reason, he still wants to see him. Which is unfair, so Stiles gets to be even angrier at Derek because he can’t even manage to be the proper sort of angry where he doesn’t want to see his stupid, chiseled face.

“Fucking stupid…” Stiles mutters under his breath and tries to untangle his legs from the blanket.

_Tap. Tap._

Stiles freezes and holds absolutely still. That sound wasn’t below him. It wasn’t far away at the bottom of the stairs. That was behind him. Someone tapping at the window behind him.

_Tap. Tap._

Stiles lets out a slow breath to steady his heartbeat. No good to panic. He tries to picture his room in his head, exactly where the nightstand is, exactly where his bat leans into the crook between his bed and the wall. Needs to be able to roll over and grab it in one smooth motion.

_Tap. Tap._

“Stiles. It’s me.”

Stiles lets out a breath, tension evaporating into boneless relief. And irritation. “Fucking hell, Derek!” He whips around, kicking off his blanket and stumbling out of bed.

“You started locking it,” Derek says as Stiles opens the window. He’s crouched on the roof of the first story of the house, looking fairly put-out about that.

“I started locking it because you told me to.” Stiles crosses his arms and stays in front of the window. He’s still mad and Derek can just say whatever he needs to say and then go home. “’So weird things can’t get into your room in the middle of the night’ was the exact reason, I believe.”

Derek just climbs in the window anyway, with no fucks to give that he has to mash right into Stiles and then sidle past him to get into the room. “Right. Weird things, not me.”

“Why the hell would I think you were going to be coming in my window tonight?” Stiles raises an eyebrow, keeping his arms crossed.

“Because someone was knocking on your door just before midnight when you’re home alone.”

Which is sweet, but Stiles will not let himself be swayed. “Well, that’s nice of you. Smell anyone weird around the perimeter?”

“I don’t know.”

After a solid minute of passive-aggressive staring, Stiles shrugs and turns back to his bed. “Okay. Thanks for checking.” He hears Derek groan behind him and fidget for a few seconds. Probably debating if he actually just wants to leave, Stiles would bet.

“I’m sorry,” Derek sighs. “I shouldn’t have been so…” He twists a hand in the air like he’s beckoning the right word to come to him.

“Sketchy? Evasive? Weird?” Stiles offers.

“Sketchy is a good one,” Derek says, conceding. “I got wigged out.”

“By breakfast?” Now it’s Derek’s turn to give Stiles that same unimpressed look. Stiles holds his hands up. “Okay, that’s fair. I guess I came at you out of the blue with like… trying to be all proper and ask you on a date. I’ll warn you first next time. But to be even fairer, you dropped the M-I offer on me.”

When Derek just follows Stiles back to his bed and doesn’t ask for a translation, Stiles knows he’s been thinking about it too. He climbs into bed and scoots over, feeling the mattress dip behind him as Derek climbs in as well. “I guess that was weird.”

“I think just going on a date would be less weird than asking a hookup to move in with you.”

“You’re not a hookup,” Derek grumbles, stealing one of the pillows. “You’re… Stiles.”

Stiles snorts and rolls over to face him. “Well, yeah. But just because you say sweet shit like that sometimes doesn’t mean my dad won’t flip out.”

Derek makes a face, reaching for strands of Stiles’ hair to play with. “I didn’t think of that.”

“Well… what do you think of it now?” Stiles asks, going cross-eyed to follow Derek’s fingers up to his hairline.

“…Weird.”

Stiles snorts. “Weird is okay. It’s a new idea.”

 

* * *

 

When Stiles wakes up, it sounds like his bed is vibrating around him. It’s not actually moving, though. There’s just a low, rumbling frequency emanating from it. Stiles scrubs his eyes and squints at his clock. Past 2 am. He tries to roll over to get his bearings and figure out what the fuck is going on, but a hand catches his shoulder and pins him back to the mattress.

Right, Derek is here. That would explain the growling. “Derek?”

“Be quiet.”

Stiles is, at least for the first few seconds. “What’s wrong?”

“Stiles.”

Stiles strains his eyes in the dark room, but all the shadows he expects are in their proper place. The yellow of the streetlights outside still falls over his desk, creating a cross-shaped shadow from where it passes through his windowpane. Aside from Derek growling, it’s quiet. If the clock downstairs is ticking, he can’t hear it over Derek. The house still… feels empty, for lack of a better word, so his dad is probably still at work.

“Derek, what’s wrong?” Stiles asks, lowering his voice to a whisper.

“Don’t you hear it?” Derek growls, voice so low that the actual words are almost lost.

“The only thing I can hear is you, man.” Stiles tries to wriggle free and Derek pushes more weight down on his shoulder. “What do you hear?”

“Someone is knocking.”

Stiles goes very still and strains his ears to hear past the guttural sounds coming from Derek’s throat.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

It’s very faint. Maybe it’s an echo of what he heard before, what he’s expecting to hear now. But he can hear Derek’s noises drop an octave at the same time. Not his imagination, then.

“Are you expecting anyone?”

Stiles can feel Derek’s fingers digging into his shoulder and he gropes behind himself blindly with his free hand. “At 2 am, no. But dude, my dad is a cop. He’s working overnight. There are other people it could be.” Stiles hopes that’s the case, even though the pounding in his chest tells him that it’s probably not. But on the off chance, he can’t have Derek popping the door open, fangs and werewolf eyes out and ready to tear into something. “Don’t go launching yourself out the door.”

The growl behind him turns less feral and more frustrated. The sort of growl Stiles is used to hearing on a daily basis from Derek. “Fine.”

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

“I’m just going to go talk to whoever it is.”

“I’ll go with you.” Stiles pushes at Derek’s shoulder. Or maybe it’s his ribs. He can’t really turn his head much and Derek is kind of just all muscle, so it’s hard to tell. Whatever part he’s pushing at, Derek doesn’t budge, of course. “If it’s someone my dad sent, it’s gonna get back to him if you’re the one opening the door.” Stiles doesn’t know why he’s so stuck on the idea that maybe this is all just someone checking on him at 2 am. Or maybe a junior deputy spreading the word that a serial killer is loose and his dad wants him down at the station for safekeeping. That would be nice.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

It’s not a deputy. No one is talking. No one is announcing their name or their intention. The knocking stays steady and… monotone. If knocking can be monotone.

“I don’t think that’s a person,” Derek growls.

“Wow, could you have chosen a more disturbing way to say that?” Stiles groans, dropping his forehead into the mattress. Someone knocking at his door at 2 am didn’t need any help from Derek in making it more creepy.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

“It’s a rhythm,” Derek says, oblivious to Stiles’ protests. “They’re knocking at perfect intervals. It’s always the same.”

“Stop describing more reasons this is disturbing.” Stiles gives him an awkward reaching-around-his-own-back shove. “Off.”

Derek finally sits up off him, getting to his feet. He immediately skulks out of the room, leaving Stiles to scramble to his feet and follow after him with far less silent grace.

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

Stiles does his best not to flinch when the sound comes more clearly once they’re on the stairwell. Derek’s eyes light up blue and the rumbling starts in his throat again. Stiles nudges him.

“Dude,” he whispers, as if someone on the other side of a door at the bottom of a staircase can hear him. “Remember what we talked about.”

“That’s not a deputy,” Derek growls. Stiles can see the hairs on the back of Derek’s neck standing up, and he swears there are visible twitches in his muscles right before his supernatural alarm bells finally make him launch the rest of the way down the stairs.

Derek grabs the door and wrenches it open. Stiles is still trying to run down the stairs to catch up and he’ll never be able to say for sure, but he’d bet his life and that of his Jeep that Derek opened that door in full fanged form. So it’s probably actually a good thing that there’s not a deputy standing there.

Or anyone standing there.

That’s… not as good a thing.

Derek steps outside and prowls around the porch, leaving the door open the dark of the night. Stiles hurries into the doorway, skin crawling at the idea of something still out there and maybe still waiting. He stays in the doorway, blocking it.

“Derek!” he whispers. “Dude, get back inside!”

“Something was out here,” Derek mutters from where he’s crouched near the steps.

“Yeah, we know that. We heard the knocking. Get back inside.”

“Where the fuck did it run off to? Why? It stuck around so goddamn long knocking…”

“Probably because a werewolf launched itself out the door.” Stiles cranes out the door and grasps the back of Derek’s shirt, tugging it. “Get inside, there are still neighbors around who can see you, man. Wolf eyes off.”

 

* * *

 

Stiles is sitting on his porch (where it's safe when it's sunny and bright and populated outside), staring at a page of very tiny writing. Page 12 of very tiny writing, and there are lots more pages of tiny writing after it. Though at some point he assumes it does the normal thing for an instructions manual and switches to Spanish. But there are a lot of… small parts in these diagrams, and Stiles is beginning to think that he's actually not fully qualified to disassemble a doorbell.

_Knock-knock-knock._

Stiles makes a noise he's not proud of and whips around, flailing at the air with his instruction booklet and his Phillips-head screwdriver. Liam is standing on the middle step of the porch, knuckles still poised against the balustrade, looking at Stiles with a mix of concern and resignation. Like he's accepted that Stiles is always going to weird him out a little.

“Uh… are you okay?”

“I'm fine. Don't sneak up on people like that,” Stiles huffs, smoothing his booklet back out.

“I didn't sneak. I was literally doing the opposite of sneaking and it still freaked you out,” Liam protests, knocking again for emphasis. Stiles cringes a little and swats at Liam's hand.

“Okay, fine, whatever. Just… stand on the sidewalk and yell before approaching next time.”

“Weirdo.” Liam hops over the banister to sit on the railing. “Whatcha doing?”

“Installing a new doorbell.”

“Why?” Liam reaches over and presses the dimly backlit button that's been attached to the side of the house as long as Stiles can remember. The bell chimes inside.

“Dude!” Stiles slaps his hand away. “My dad is on nights, he’s sleeping.”

“Shit.” Liam covers his mouth. “Sorry, Sheriff Stillinski,” he calls up at the second story.

Stiles rubs his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Yes, yelling up at my sleeping dad makes things better.” He waves Liam off when it looks like he might apologize again. “Just stop making noise at the house. I never said the bell wasn’t working.”

Liam blinks like he’s trying to think back on the conversation that was all of two minutes ago. “…Oh. Then why are you putting in a new one? Does is sound cooler?”

Stiles is about to ask if cool-sounding doorbells are a thing, but he stops himself. He has many pages of instructions to deal with, and that’s not a rabbit hole he needs to fall down right now. “No. It’s got a camera in it.”

“Woah, seriously?” Liam hops off the banister and crouches beside Stiles, peering over his shoulders at the instructions. “That’s so creepy. Are you gonna be voyeur-ing people? Isn’t that where internet porn comes from?”

“What are you under the impression people come and do on my porch?” Stiles asks, looking over his shoulder. “And stop looking at the kind of porn.”

“Well, why else would you need a camera on your doorbell?” Liam asks, like Stiles is the one being ridiculous here.

“To see who’s at the door?” Stiles waits for that to sink in.

“…Ohhh, like if you’re upstairs and someone is at the door?”

Stiles twists around just enough to pat Liam’s back. “There ya go. Knew you’d get there.”

“That’s not as weird.”

“I’m not trying to be weird at all.” Stiles rolls his eyes and flips back to the beginning of his instructions. He’s read them twice and he vaguely understands the basic steps. Obviously, that makes him totally ready to start. “Hang out for a minute and you can help me test it once it’s installed.”

‘A minute’ ends up being a fairly relative term. Two hours into the process, the Sheriff has been woken up by the old bell going off multiple times while Stiles is trying to uninstall it. He’s pretty good about it (since this really isn’t the weirdest thing Stiles has ever done) and brings out peanut butter sandwiches for them. And shuts off power to the doorbell, which was probably in the preparation part of the instructions that Stiles skipped.

“Okay, I think it’s ready,” Stiles says, grabbing the sleek black box and trying to jostle it. The screws are holding firm, the blue light around the button lit up once he switched the breaker back on… everything looks good.

“So how does it work?” Liam asks around a mouthful of sandwich, leaning in close to peer at the small black gleam of the camera lens above the doorbell.

“There’s an app,” Stiles says, sandwich abandoned on the railing of the porch while he’s working on his phone. “And it lets us set the distance of the motion detectors, so we’ll set it to about the length of the porch…”

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -2:43 PM

[New image from your doorbell.]

The warning pops up, making Stiles’ phone vibrate twice in his hand. Stiles taps the button the look at the image and flinches away when the screen almost whites out with the lens flares off of Liam’s eyes. “Dude, get your face out of the camera!”

Liam stands up straight and looks back. “What did I… oh.” He steps back and waves at the camera. “Want me to ring the bell?” he asks, already ringing it.

Stiles steps off the porch and beckons Liam with him. “Yeah, that’s great. Get down here, I wanna test the motion sensors.” Once his phone has quieted down the alerts, Stiles sets his phone back to the home screen. “Okay. Now go walk up the steps, but don’t actually ring the bell,” he says, giving Liam a push forward.

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -2:49 PM

[New image from your doorbell.]

Stiles grins and touches the icon, opening a photo of Liam standing on the porch, arms slightly blurry from the way he swings them idly while standing there. “Perfect!”

“It worked?” Liam asks, spying the remnants of Stiles’ sandwich and stealing it from the railing.

“Worked,” he confirms. “And that’s gross.”

“Wha’?” Liam asks around the half sandwich he crammed into his mouth at once.

Stiles shakes his head. “Never mind. This is awesome.” Let those bastards knock all they want now.

 

* * *

 

Stiles is convinced that Derek still doesn’t completely understand what the phrase ‘Netflix and chill’ means, and that’s cool. It’ll go out of style way before Derek works it into his vocabulary, so Stiles just invites Derek over for ‘Netflix and fucking and I have something new to show you.’

It got Derek on his porch promptly at 6. Stiles grins at the photo on his phone of Derek leaning in and tapping at the new doorbell. It’s weirdly cute. He doesn’t even care that werewolf eyeshine is going to eventually blind him.

“You’re adorable,” he says as he opens the door, flipping his phone around to show Derek the photo.

“Am not.” Derek takes the phone and examines it. He looks at the doorbell placement, then at the phone. Then he waves at the doorbell. “It’s a camera?”

“Yeah. Pretty swanky, huh? Whoever was at the door last night better get ready to smile.”

 

* * *

 

Stiles is sitting on the edge of his bed, toweling his hair dry and trying really hard not to laugh when Derek licks water droplets off his back. “If we go again, next showers are gonna be cold,” he says, trying to keep his voice stern. Or at least not-aroused. It’s not working super well.

“No visitors tonight,” Derek says behind him. “Except the pizza guy, and he was supposed to come.”

“I mean, that thing isn’t exactly subtle,” Stiles says, shrugging. Derek’s tongue traces inside his shoulder blade, making him snicker. “It looks like a camera. If that deters them from fucking with the door, money well spent.”

“I don’t like it.” Derek sits up behind him and takes the towel from him, getting to work on giving Stiles’ hair a proper drying.

“You don’t like it when creepy things _don_ _’t_ happen?” Stiles leans his head back into the toweling. “You’ll be happy in Beacon Hills forever.”

 

* * *

 

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -12:53 AM

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -12:57 AM

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -1:12 AM

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -1:20 AM

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -1:27 AM

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -1:39 AM

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -2:44 AM

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -3:01 AM

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -3:36 AM

 

* * *

 

“I _really_ don’t like it,” Derek growls, looking at the list of alerts on Stiles’ phone as he pulls his pants on, using his Beta blues to see in the dark room. It’s just past 4, and hell if Stiles is going to put on a light and give the neighbors something to ask his dad about.

“It’s just someone walking by,” Stile says, even though it makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “I mean, we don’t have a baseline. This is the first night it’s been installed. Maybe we have a lot of night joggers.”

Derek gives him a Look. That ‘how did you survive this long?’ Look. “No one walks around at that hour here.”

“You do, or you can’t say so for sure.”

“I’m a werewolf.”

Stiles raises an eyebrow at him. “Thank you for that deep admission.”

Derek pushes his shoulder, making Stiles topple over on the bed even though he’s being pretty gentle. “If you’re comforted by something supernatural prowling around your house as long as it doesn’t knock on your door…”

“It doesn’t even get _close_ to the door,” Stiles says, waving the phone at Derek. “They’re all just alerts.” Derek just looks at him, and even in the dark Stiles knows he’s getting that ‘so?’ expression. “Which means they never even got in range of the camera. So these are all people who probably didn’t even step on the porch.”

“Probably?”

Stiles groans and fishes Derek’s shirt out from behind the bed, pushing it into his arms. “I mean, maybe they got up a couple steps at the very closest. I’ll pull out the manual and give you the exact camera range later if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Does having someone wander up to the second step of your porch repeatedly in the middle of the night make _you_ feel better?” Derek asks, all logical and pointed, which is really unfair. Stiles is aware that this is freaky.

“We don’t even know if it’s one somebody. It’s probably lots of people. Random and unassociated.”

Derek sighs and pulls his shirt on. “Stiles.”

Stiles sighs in turn. “No. I get that it’s weird, okay? I don’t like it any more than you do, but my dad will be home soon.” Derek opens his mouth and Stiles immediately shakes his head. “No, which means you have to be gone now. No roof lurking either.”

Derek scowls. “Why not?”

“Because we’re going to have dinner with him soon and it’s really going to go poorly if any part of it is my dad going ‘Oh Derek, didn’t I see you skulking through the bushes in Mrs. Tumnell’s backyard last Sunday morning?’”

Derek fidgets for a second, or at least Stiles thinks he does in the near-black room, then he stands up straight. “So we’re really going to do it? To tell him?”

Stiles nods, feeling around in his top drawer for a pair of sweatpants. “Yeah, we are. So it needs to go like… super flawless. Or he’s gonna be even more irritated that I’m telling him about my significant other in the same conversation that I tell him I’m moving in with him.”

Derek snorts out a laugh in the dark, breaking some of the tension. “Significant other?”

“Shut up!” Stiles throws a t-shirt at him. “Don’t you think ‘boyfriend’ sounds weird? It sounds weird.”

“At least it sounds less formal. ‘Significant other’ is for wedding invitations from distant cousins who don’t know which way you lean.”

“Ha ha, you’re full of jokes tonight.” Stiles shoves his phone in the pocket of his sweatpants and pads back over to Derek. “Gimme back my shirt, I was gonna wear that.”

Derek sighs and bunches the shirt up, slipping the neck over Stiles’ head. “Fine, I’ll go. But you’re locking the door behind me and coming right back up to your room, right?”

“On my honor.”

Derek gives him a dubious look.

“Okay, ow Derek. That hurts.” Stiles shoves his arm. “I swear on the continued moderate health of my Jeep.”

“I believe that one.”

Stiles follows Derek down to the back door in the kitchen where he slips outside and perfectly into the shadows cast by the house. Stiles can hear him sniffing the air and gives him a minute to get a thorough look around and decide that they’re alone. “Okay? I gotta close the door before a neighbor sees us.”

“You’re awfully worried about your neighbors being up at really weird hours,” Derek grumbles. “Close the door and lock it. Go back up to your room.”

“And you’re-”

“Yes, leaving. I don’t smell anything.”

Stiles nods and reaches out, finding Derek’s wrist and squeezing it before he backs up into the house and shuts the door, sliding the deadbolt into place. The streetlights outside spill small pools of light on the kitchen floor through the window, and Stiles thinks he sees a shadow pass in front of it for just a second. Trusting that Derek is on his way home, Stiles turns and heads back through the living room. At least he can see by the dim lamp that’s on to give his dad some light when he comes in at Still-Fucking-Dark-o’ clock.

His phone buzzes in his pocket. Stiles groans and pulls it out, hoping Derek isn’t already trying to come back.

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] - 4:24 AM

Stiles looks at his phone, then at the front door. He waits, listening to the pounding of his own heart. Waits. Probably just Derek coming around the front of the house to check there too before he actually goes home.

Stiles waits.

No one knocks.

Stiles turns and bolts back up the stairs to his bedroom.


	2. Chapter 2

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -6:06 PM

Stiles glances at his phone when it buzzes on the dining room table.

“Is that Scott?” his dad asks from where he’s standing at the stove, inspecting the back of a frozen pizza box.

“Why would it be Scott?” Stiles asks, frowning. “All texts sound the same. And this didn’t even have a tone, it was just a vibration.”

His dad looks over, giving him one of those cop-appraising looks. “So… not Scott then?”

Stiles sighs. “No.”

“Time was I’d ask that and the answer would always be ‘yes.’ Though you’d also have texted him back at least once.” John looks back at the box and goes back to frowning. “You two okay?”

“Yeah, we’re fine,” Stiles says, probably a little too immediately, but it’s already out. Deflection time. “What about the pizza is so upsetting? It’s pizza.”

“Well for one, it’s a veggie lovers. Two, it’s thin crust.” John shoots him a betrayed look.

“It’s just better for you than other pizza,” Stiles protests. “It’s still not health food. It’s still pizza.”

“It’s tomato sauce on a cracker.”

Stiles pushes himself up from the table and takes the box. “You know, if you didn’t look for stuff to be appalled by, you’d like it just fine because it’s still pizza.” He opens the oven to check on it. “See? It’s getting crispy and brown and everything.”

His dad just shakes his head and goes back upstairs to finish getting ready for work.

 

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -6:15 PM

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -6:21 PM

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -6:28 PM

 

“You’re not throwing a party as soon as I’m gone, are you?” John asks as Stiles clears away their paper plates and crumpled paper towels, giving his dad’s empty plate a pointed look. Ha. Pizza is still pizza.

“Yeah, Dad. Everyone wants to party on a Sunday night.” Stiles tosses the plates into the trash. “Dishes are done.”

“You’re a good son. So, how’s Liam doing?”

“Liam… who you just saw yesterday?” Stiles asks, raising an eyebrow. “Are you doing a friend check on me, dad?”

John puts his hands up. “I’m just asking how things are going. You’ve been… weird, but in an unusual way.”

“Sorry.” Stiles scrubs a hand through his hair, feeling like an ass. He shouldn’t make his dad worry like this, and of course he was going to notice that Stiles has basically been living on-edge for days. “I just… getting back into school and stuff is… harder than I thought it would be.”

Stiles kind of hates that his dad’s face immediately relaxes into that look of understanding, and maybe a little relief. A rough schedule is something he can understand and help with, and Stiles… can’t replace that with mysterious knocks at the door that may be supernatural. He can let his dad have this one, for now. He can layer on the crippling worry once he’s confirmed it’s actually something supernatural and now just… not just another thing he can’t prove is anything. No one’s getting paralyzed or shredded up yet, so he’s got time.

“I know you’re having a tough time getting back into it after the break you took,” he says, setting a hand on Stiles’ shoulder. “But you’ve been working your butt off, kid. You’ll get back into the swing of it. Remember when you started high school and freaked out at having an actual syllabus?”

“Oh my god, Dad,” Stiles groans, grabbing his dad’s shoulders and turning him towards the door. “Go. You need to go to work.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to reminisce about how you started color coding everything for the first two semesters?” John laughs, grabbing his keys.

Stiles hears his phone vibrate on the kitchen table and swallows. When John grabs his keys and reaches for the door, Stiles ducks around him and grabs the knob. He cracks the door open just an inch to look at the empty porch. Then he opens the door fully and looks along the full length of the porch, hanging over the threshold of the door.

“Stiles?”

Stiles stumbles out onto the porch, having brilliantly forgotten that his dad was behind him. “Sorry. Ah… checking for Amazon boxes,” he says, looking around the yard. Empty. No disturbances or signs of hell creatures.

“Are you expecting anything?” John waits by the door, clearly expecting Stiles to go back inside.

“Nope.” Stiles pulls the door shut and gestures at the stairs. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your car. Check for contraband.”

John gives another once-over before conceding that Stiles was simply going to be weird right now. He learned to stop fighting that years ago. “Because I’d keep contraband in the part of my job I park in front of the house every day.”

“Sounds to me like you’re admitting I should search your office next time I’m at the station,” Stiles says, voice distant as he follows his dad down the porch and cranes his neck to see around the cars. No obvious shadows that don’t belong.

“I made no such admission and you’d never get that to hold up in court.” John unlocks the driver’s side door and gets into his cruiser. “Stiles?”

“Yeah?” Stiles leans against the door, trying to hint coax dad to get in fully by nudging it slightly.

“Maybe give yourself a night off from studying. Play a video game or something.”

Stiles shuts the door when his dad finally swings his legs around into the car. “Never thought I’d see the day when you told me to skip my homework for Call of Duty,” he calls through the window, and immediately backs away from the car, waving and hoping his dad takes the hint to just _go_ and not roll down his window or something.

He breathes out a sigh of relief when the car backs out of the driveway, turns, and pulls away from the house. The relief only lasts until Stiles turns back toward the house. It’s not fully dusk yet, and there’s plenty of light. But the sun is low in the sky and everything casts long shadows that stretch too far. He stands in the driveway, looking at the porch, trying to scan the corners where shadows have gathered. Stiles forces himself to walk up the steps and not just turn and bolt into the house. It’s his own door to his own house but it just feels… foreboding. Like going to war.

Stiles grasps the doorknob and looks down both sides of the porch. Empty. And, Stilinski men being of sparse taste, nothing anything could hide behind or under.

Anyone. Jesus, he doesn’t need to add onto his freak-out.

Stiles shuts the door behind him and turns the deadbolt into place. He spends a long time standing at the front door, looking around the living room. Nothing moves. Nothing breathes. The clock in the kitchen ticks.

He’s alone.

Stiles lets his breath out and heads into the kitchen to grab his phone. The last two doorbell alerts have photo icons beside them. Stiles checks them briefly, but, as expected, they’re just photos of him and his dad leaving and of Stiles coming back to the door.

[Did the alerts start back up? -DH]

Stiles smiles faintly. Derek has probably been watching the clock, because he always manages to start texting right as Stiles is having to settle in for the night alone.

[Yeah. They started earlier tonight, when my dad was still home. -SS]

[Did you check outside before he left? -DH]

[Yeah, nothing. I mean, it could have legit been people at this hour. They were just pretty close together. -SS]

Stiles holds tight to that. It was fairly early in the evening, of course people would still be walking around. All of that might have been totally innocent people just walking their dogs and getting in a jog before the sunlight was gone.

[I don’t like it.] -DH

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -6:49 PM

Stiles looks at the door, tightening his grip on his phone without meaning to. The phone buzzes in his hand again and Stiles feels his stomach drop. He doesn’t want to look. Doesn’t want to see a notification for a new photo from the doorbell camera. He keeps his eyes trained on the door and tries to strain his ears enough to hear any creaking from the wooden planks. He tightens his spine and clenches his stomach, bracing himself for the knocking.

Silence.

Stiles counts the ticks from the clock.

10.

25\. No knocking.

40.

60.

Silence.

Stiles steels himself and looks at his phone.

[Come spend the night over here. -DH]

Stiles lets out his breath, laughing and letting the relief loosen his chest back up.

[Tempting, but then I have to get home before my dad. And walk from my car to the door in the dark. -SS]

[Idiot. I’ll come and walk you into the house. You’re not walking anywhere alone in the dark. -DH]

Stiles looks out the window. There’s still a little sunlight left, deep golds and reds that strains to be seen through trees and around rooftops. He can throw some clothes in a bag and make it out to his Jeep while it’s still light enough to see all around him. Tell his dad maybe that he went to see Scott, since that would probably make him happy to hear. Or maybe not, since that’s the sort of lie that would probably also make him an awful son. He’ll make up something for his dad.

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -6:58 PM

Stiles feels his heartbeat pick up a little at that goddamn notice. Right, he’s not doing this all night.

[Coming to your place. -SS]

Stiles looks around his room, grabbing his backpack and shoving his laptop inside. Maybe if his dad isn’t worried, he can just stay for breakfast and then head straight to school. He opens his dresser, pondering what he should take to wear, especially if they’re going to be his clothes all day tomorrow. Maybe he should just leave these at Derek’s this time, so he’s always got clothes there. That would be… smart, right? Since he’ll be moving all of his stuff over anyway. That still feels so… strange to him when he lingers on that thought too long. Moving in with Derek. Living with Derek. As a bo-

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -7:02 PM

[New image from your doorbell.]

Stiles stares at the second notice that comes through right after the first. A photo. His pulse beats harder against the side of his neck, thumb hovering over the alert.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Stiles stumbles a step and hits his dresser hard enough to tilt it for just a second. The drawers clatter and a tube of chapstick bounces when it hits the floor. It sounds so loud that he’s sure the person at the door must have heard it, even from down a flight of stairs and through a solid door. Stiles makes himself stand very still, trying to hear for some sign that they heard it, that they know he’s here.

The clock ticks in the kitchen.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Stiles slowly turns his phone over and thumbs open the alert.

The picture is dark, mostly, but not… properly dark. Not blank. There are slats of sky and the houses across the street, just long, skinny bits breaking through the dark.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Stiles stands up slowly and holds the phone away, tilting it around. There’s a shape to the darkness, something… deliberate about what’s dark and what’s not.

A hand. Stiles looks at the photo again. Once he’s seen it, seen the outline of the fingers and the background that peeks around them, it’s impossible to miss it. It’s a hand covering the camera lens.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

[Someone is knocking. -SS]

Stiles looks out his window, down to the empty yard below. He doesn’t know what he was expecting to see when he obviously can’t see the porch from there. Everything looks fine. It looks normal. The yard is empty.

[Who is it? Where’s your camera doorbell? -DH]

[They’re covering the lens. -SS]

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Stiles steps over to his door and looks down the stairs at the front door. It might as well be miles away. He steps out of his room and into the hallway, still craning his neck to watch the door. Someone is standing out there. Stiles just knows it. He can feel them behind the door, just like every other time. The hairs on the back of his neck and his arms stand on end.

**Bzzt.**

**Bzzt.**

**Bzzt.**

Stiles realizes the sound is from his pocket. His phone. He pulls his phone out and stops.

He’s halfway down the stairs. When did he start going down the stairs?

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

Stiles looks at the door. His phone vibrates in his hands again. Someone is knocking and they’re not going to go away. They’re going to keep coming back. They’ve done it for days already. Clearly there’s nothing in their life to stop them from spending all hours outside his house.

**Bzzt.**

He needs to answer the door, Stiles realizes. How can he even think of leaving if he never answers the door? Is he supposed to just let his dad answer the door? God, what the hell kind of son does that make him?

**Bzzt.**

Stiles looks down at his phone.

[So they know it’s a camera. -DH]

[Is that a good thing or a bad thing? -DH]

[Was the point to be sneaky? -DH]

[Stiles. -DH]

[Stiles answer me. -DH]

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

Stiles pauses in the middle of texting Derek back and looks at the door. He has to answer that. It’s not right if he doesn’t. He’s just putting it off the longer he stands here.

He _needs_ to answer the door.

Stiles is in front of the door. When did he get there? How long has he been there?

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

Stiles reaches for the doorknob.

He opens the door.

There’s a girl standing there. Her head is tilted down enough for her dark hair to cover her face a little too much. She’s wearing a coat, but the fit is… wrong. It hangs off her like-

Like a scarecrow.

A scarecrow with chipped black nail polish from the gas station parking lot. Her hand is still in the air, ready to knock again. The shorter boy is beside her, covering the camera with his hand.

“We need to use your phone,” the girl says. She only lowers her hand when she speaks. “We need to call our parents.”

Stiles nods. They need to use the phone. Of course they do, they’re kids in a neighborhood they don’t live in and it’s getting dark. They need to use the phone. Any questions he had about how they found out where he lives just disappear into a fog in his head.

Stiles holds out a hand and offers the girl his cell phone. She doesn’t look at it, just shakes her head. She’s still looking at her feet.

“We need to use the phone inside.”

No. The way Stiles’ pulse pounds in his own ears at that says no. Danger.

But the kids need to use the phone. Stiles tries offering his cell phone again. “This one… this one works fine. You can use it.”

“No.” She doesn’t look at the phone. “We need to come inside and use your phone. You need to let us in.”

The phone in Stiles’ hand lights up with Derek’s picture, half of him obscured by the glare off his eyes. ‘Mr. Brightside’ begins playing. The noise jars Stiles and he steps back, shaking his head.

“You guys… need to go,” he says, scrubbing at his temple with the heel of his hand, like he can somehow rub away the fog in his brain. “You can’t keep sneaking around my door. And knocking all the time.”

“Let us in. We just want to use the phone so we can call our parents.”

The phone goes dark. Then it lights up again immediately. The music begins playing.

The girl looks up at him. Her dark hair parts like a curtain.

Her eyes are solid black. The porch light above them glints off them.

“You should turn that phone off.”

He should turn his phone off. Stiles feels himself hitting the button on the side of his phone. The ringing stops. The phone shuts off and goes dark.

“We need to call our parents,” she says again.

Stiles feels himself trying to rock his weight back, trying to step away from the threshold of the door. They need to call their parents. They’re kids who need to call their parents. They must know this is the sheriff’s house, it’s a safe place for lost kids.

Black eyes. Something is wrong, people don’t have black eyes. Stiles scrambles to hold onto that. Wrong, this is wrong. His heart is pounding in his chest, the pit of his stomach feels like someone dropped ice in it. Wrong. Everything but his brain knows something is wrong here.

“Invite us inside.”

Stiles startles when the boy speaks. He had almost forgotten he was there. His phone slips from his grasp and hits the wooden planks of the porch.

**BANG.**

The noise makes him tighten his grip on the door. Some of the fog in his head clears a little. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, all of this is _wrong_.

“You need to leave.” Stiles wishes his voice sounded more forceful. It doesn’t, it sounds like pleading. Or like a question.

The boy lowers his hand from covering the camera. He turns his face upward. Stiles has four pitch-black eyes trained on him, making him take a step back.

“We need to come in and call our parents. It will all happen very quickly.”

Stiles shakes his head, ignoring that voice in his head that tries to creep back in, mewling that these are kids who need help. Why is he turning lost kids away into the dark? What kind of sheriff’s son is he? Wrong. This is wrong, kids don’t have black eyes like this. Not normal ones.

Not real ones.

The boy steps forward. Stiles has a momentary flash of base instinct to try and grab his phone, but he doesn’t dare reach outside the threshold of the door. The boy is right at the edge of the door frame.

“Let us inside.”

Stiles shakes himself free and swings the door shut as hard as he can. It slams into the frame, rattling the wall and jarring him right down to his bones. He flips the deadbolt and turns away, pressing his back against the door.

“Go away! Go the fuck away, I’m not letting you in!” he hollers through the closed door. “If you don’t go the fuck away, I’m calling the cops!”

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

“Open the door,” the girl says. “You’ll need your phone back.”

“I have one in here!” Stiles yells, against his better judgment that says he shouldn’t bait whatever the hell these things are. “And you already know that because you’re _not_ coming in to use it!”

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

Stiles slides down to the floor slowly and forces air into his lungs. His muscles feel like jelly and he can’t stay up on them anymore. The phone in the kitchen might as well be somewhere across town for all the use it is to him right now.

“Just breathe,” he tells himself, and takes another breath on his own command. “Just… get your shit together. And go into the kitchen.” He doesn’t sound like he’s even halfway sure of what he’s saying, but his own voice fills the space better than the ticking of that goddamn clock.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

“I’m not letting you in!” Stiles slams his elbow back against the door. “Go the fuck away!”

“Stiles?” Derek’s voice comes from the other end. “Stiles, what happened?”

Stiles makes a choked noise he isn’t proud of and scrambles up onto his knees. They still don’t want to hold his weight up, but he manages to fumble the deadbolt open and get himself out of the way enough that he can pull the door open. Derek is there, holding his phone and frowning in that severe way that makes the crease in the middle of his forehead appear. He immediately crouches down to Stiles’ level, pressing the phone back into his hands.

“I’m here,” he says, keeping his voice dead even. Stiles can see his eyes darting around the porch, but he stays where he is. He wonders how fast his heart must be going to keep Derek cemented in place when he thinks there might be something near enough for him to shred up. “Stiles. Tell me if you’re okay.”

Stiles nods. Derek raises his eyebrows at him until Stiles drags in a breath and finds his voice. “M’okay. Was anyone… out there before you knocked?”

“I didn’t knock,” Derek says, shaking his head. “I had barely gotten onto the porch and you started yelling.”

Stiles stares at him a second. “No. No, I was yelling because you knocked.”

“I didn’t knock.”

“Then they were there like… half a second before you showed up. You must have seen them, right?” Stiles cranes out the door, looking from one end of the porch to the other, where the light runs into shadows at the end. Empty.

“No one was on the porch.” Derek catches his chin and makes Stiles look at him. “It doesn’t matter, okay? No one is here now except me. Come on, let’s get the door shut and locked.” He stands up and moves inside the house. Once the door is shut and dead-bolted, he sits down beside Stiles on the ground and puts an arm around him. “Tell me what happened.”

Stiles opens his phone with shaky fingers.

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -8:44 PM

[New image from your doorbell]

Stiles looks at the image, then shoves the phone at Derek when looking at it for too long begins to make that cold feeling come back into the pit of his stomach. The image shows the boy. The tips of his fingers are black smudges at the bottom of the picture as he lowered his hand. His face looks washed out by the light from above him, casting long shadows down his face. His black eyes stare directly at the doorbell camera.

Derek looks at the photo for longer than Stiles would have expected. It feels like one of those images no one should look at for a long time. He only looks over at Stiles when the screen goes black on its own. “Is that what’s been knocking?”

Stiles really hates how he calls the kid a ‘what’ and not a ‘who.’ It fits better, though. “Yeah. There’s two of them. That one and a girl who looks older.”

“Why did you open the door for them?”

Stiles hesitates, because that’s a totally fair question. It’s not like he absolutely doesn’t know better. But… “I don’t know. I… kept feeling like I needed to. Like it was important.” He scrubs at his forehead with the heel of his hand in frustration. “I can’t… can’t explain it better than that.”

“It’s fine,” Derek says immediately, tightening the arm around his shoulders. “What did they want?”

“They wanted to come inside. They kept saying they needed to call their parents, but… they mostly just wanted to come inside.” Stiles drops his forehead against Derek’s shoulder and closes his eyes tight until the spots behind his eyes turn white, trying to remember anything concrete. “They… kept insisting that I needed to let them in,” he says slowly, opening his eyes again. “I don’t think they can come in on their own.”

Derek frowns, eyes unfocusing a little while he turns the information over in his head.

“Why did I open the door for them?” Stiles asks. “Do you know?”

“A lot of supernatural creatures have some level of compulsion,” Derek sighs. “Nature’s trade-off for the inability to blend in. Remember how the twins got enrolled in high school?”

Stiles blinks at him. “Seriously? I thought the front office was just lax as hell.”

“Well… it’s a public school, so probably that too.” Derek shrugs. “Kali got into a hospital and got ahold of scrubs and no one noticed she had talons for toenails. It’s… usually something that just makes people shrug off things they shouldn’t. But to compel someone directly to do something they don’t want to do, especially if they’re already under duress… that takes a high level of power.”

“Great,” Stiles sighs. That’s exactly what he didn’t want to hear right now.

“Come on.” Derek lets him go and stands up, holding a hand out. Stiles grabs it and gets to his feet with a little less grace than usual, but they hold him. “I’ll stay here until your dad gets home.” Stiles would like to say there was some firmness in Derek’s voice that made him decide not to argue, but honestly, he’d have insisted if Derek hadn’t offered.

 

* * *

 

Stiles lets himself believe that Derek showing up scared them off, that the nightmare is over. Or even just that they’re gone for the night. His phone goes quiet. The door stays quiet. There are hours of peace where he dozes on the couch beside Derek, bat retrieved and leaned against the coffee table for easy access. The marathon of Myth Buster reruns drones quietly in the background, and all of the experiments blur into strange half-dreams in Stiles’ head that involve a lot of slow motion.

**Bzzt.**

Stiles opens his eyes immediately and looks at his phone on the coffee table. He can see the slight unnatural glow off Derek’s Beta blues beside him, also looking at the phone. Stiles reaches out and grabs the handle of his bat first. Then the phone.

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -4:31 AM

Stiles waits another few seconds. He doesn’t move a muscle. Neither does Derek. They both hold their breath, listening. Listening for the porch steps. Listening for the tell-tale buzz of the phone receiving an image file.

Silence.

“They’re back.” Stiles looks at the single alert on his phone. “Creeping around out there.”

“I’ll go have a look.” Derek tries to stand up, but Stiles throws his whole weight over Derek and grabs onto the arm of the couch to keep him pinned. Derek, generously, lets him.

“Are you crazy? You already said these things have to be powerful! And there’s two of them!”

“And what’s your plan then?” Derek asks. Stiles knew that was coming but he still hates Derek a little bit for asking. “You can’t just let them do this forever.”

“Well what are you going to do?” Stiles shoots back, glaring at Derek. All he gets is a look he can only describe as incredulous.

“…Claws?” Derek says slowly when Stiles doesn’t answer his own question. “Teeth? Fists? They can’t be impervious to harm.”

“They could be. They’re powerful.”

“Nothing is impervious. You just have to figure out how it can be hurt.”

Stiles tries to attach himself to the couch better. “I couldn’t hurt them. I couldn’t even try. I… never even thought of it,” he says slowly. It feels absurd now that he felt that level of terror and danger from these things, and it never even crossed his mind to take a swing at one. Stiles’ ‘fight or flight’ muscle is highly developed, thank you, and it’s almost a dead even split on which was it leans. But it had taken everything in him just to shut the door.

“I’m expecting it.” Derek reaches down and tugs one of Stiles’ hands off the couch. “They took you by surprise.”

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -4:37 AM

“No.”

They glare at each other in silence. The clock ticks behind them in the kitchen.

“They’re not going to go away,” Derek says. “They’re hunting.”

Stiles’ phone buzzes again, as if backing Derek up.

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -4:39 AM

Stiles grabs his phone and throws it in frustration. “Fine.” He hauls himself up with his bat. “Fine, let's do this.”

The phone buzzes against the kitchen tiles as Stiles follows Derek to the door.

It buzzes again. Photo. Must be.

Stiles grabs Derek’s arm. “They’re on the porch,” he whispers. It feels like it’s still too loud. They heard him. They definitely heard him.

Derek just nods and reaches for the door. Stiles watches his face bulk out, his brow turn heavy, the hair creep down his face. Claws slide out, scraping softly against the door where Derek is gripping the knob. Stiles chokes up on his grip on the bat.

The porch creaks outside.

Derek wrenches the door open and lunges with a snarl. Stiles hears him slam into something, and he charges after him. They crash down the porch steps in a screaming, flailing heap.

Keys hit the sidewalk.

Derek jerks back and Stiles stops dead, bat poised over his head.

John stares at both of them for a minute, eyes flicking from one to the other, and rapidly going from panicked to pissed. “What the hell is wrong with you two?!”

Stiles and Derek both jerk backwards and scramble up. Johns pushes Derek away but Stiles isn’t taking any such rejections and hauls him to his feet.

“…hi Dad.”

 

* * *

 

“I mean… you _did_ come home early without telling anyone,” Stiles says, even while he’s making his very best suck-up breakfast spread. The kitchen smells like sugar and syrup at 5 am. Derek is beside him, eyes fixed on the pan of turkey bacon snapping on the stove. Derek doesn’t know how to cook bacon, at least not to Stiles’ knowledge, but the only other option is sitting at the table with the Sheriff and that would be just cruel to subject him to.

“You’re absolutely right,” John says, raising an eyebrow over the rim of his coffee mug. Decaf. Stiles draws the line at a fourth cup of caffeine when his dad is on an alternate sleep schedule. “I should definitely have called and made the phone ring at full volume before 5 in the morning. Why didn’t I think of that?”

The waffle iron closes with a soft hiss as the batter gets hit by hot metal from all sides. Stiles nudges Derek until he figures out that the bacon needs to be flipped. “Okay, when you say it like that, it sounds stupid.”

“How in the world could that ever sound stupid?”

“Sarcasm level is reaching a little high there, Dad.”

John sets his coffee cup down. “I was just tackled off my porch by my son and a werewolf.”

Stiles cringes a little. His dad really doesn’t have to be so… so apt about that. “…Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“Instead of apologizing, how about telling me why you have Derek over at this hour.”

Stiles glances at Derek and sees the same terror he’s feeling reflected in Derek’s eyes. Shit. With all the worries about weird kids who might eat their souls or something, and then worrying that maybe they broke something that won’t heal quickly on a man in his early fifties, Stiles completely forgot about this part. The part where his dad was going to want this explained. From the looks of it, so did Derek.

“Uh… that new doorbell… isn’t working,” Stiles says slowly, brain scrambling for the lie with the most truth in it. Just enough to fool a seasoned cop. Or at least satisfy him enough that he decides he probably doesn’t want to know more.

“Not working… how?” John presses. “And I’m not sure Derek is a substitute for, say, an electrician.”

“It’s uh… it’s not not-working like that,” Stiles says. “More like… a creepy kind of not-working. The kind of creepy where you call over a werewolf to check the perimeter.” Stiles digs his phone out of his pocket before his dad starts to wonder why Derek was checking the perimeter inside the house instead of out. He skips up past the photos and shows his dad the list of alerts inside the app. “See? Wouldn’t you use the old ‘phone a friend’ too?”

John pulls his glasses from his pocket and slides them on, grabbing Stiles’ hand to bring the phone closer. He looks at the list and his face goes from impatient but kind of amused to dead serious. He looks at Derek. “Was anything out there? This looks like someone casing the house.”

Derek looks at the table, and Stiles can almost feel the effort that it takes him to keep his totally calm demeanor. He shakes his head. “I checked all around the house. Nothing there that wasn’t you or Stiles.”

Stiles can hear the ‘Well, not anything human anyway’ that hangs in the air. He’s almost sure his dad is going to call them on their bullshit. But he just looks at the phone again, frowning.

“You’re not opening the door for anyone, right?” he says, looking at Stiles. Stiles immediately lies his ass off and shakes his head.

“Once you’re gone, door stays locked unless it’s Scott or Lydia or Liam.”

“Or Derek,” John says, finally releasing his grip on Stiles’ hand and letting him put his phone away.

“What?” Stiles and Derek say at the same time.

“I said Derek clearly made the short list,” John points out, nodding to Derek, who is, in fact, standing in his house at 5 am and making breakfast with Stiles.

“Uh… yeah.” Stiles can’t exactly argue with that. And if something is about to go sideways, there’s a really good chance his dad could find Derek here again before this newest shitstorm is over. “Yeah, he did.”

The timer on the waffle iron is merciful and begins beeping, giving Stiles an excuse to hurry back to Derek’s side and pop it open. “Bacon is burning,” he mumbles under his breath as he fishes around the edge of the waffle with the knife to lift it from the iron.

“I don’t know what to do with it now,” Derek mumbles back. “There’s… grease in the pan. I can’t dump this out on a plate.”

“Use a fork to put it on the plate, then you can use a paper towel and lightly-”

“What are you boys whispering about?” John asks.

“Lights!” Stiles says with too much force, grabbing a fork and hip-checking Derek away from the stove before the bacon can’t be saved. “Uh…”

“Motion-detecting lights,” Derek agrees, ripping paper towels free from the roll as Stiles drops the bacon onto a plate. “Just… just in case.”

“Double layer of security. That would be awesome. It would show that the doorbell is just being stupid.” Stiles drops fresh slices of raw bacon into the hot grease. A hand on the back of his collar yanks him back when it starts spitting. Stiles glares at Derek and tries to make eye-motions in his dad’s direction. Derek makes the same motions toward the stove and the popping grease.

John clears his throat at the table, making them both startle and spring apart. “Motion lights. Don’t you think those might be a little tricky to install?”

“Derek will help me. He’s great with maintenance stuff.”

“Fine,” his dad says, with surprisingly little argument. “I’m going to have them switch me back to days after my shift tonight anyway. The daytime duties are falling behind without me there.”

“Hey, that’s awesome!” Stiles sets the first round of food on the table and pours more coffee. “We’ll have dinner to celebrate.”

“And Derek can join us,” John says. The way he says it, it’s not actually an offer. It’s a statement. “As a thank you for helping with those lights.”

 

* * *

 

Stiles spends the night at Derek’s loft. They’re about to lose that handy ‘no one is keeping an eye on us at night’ freedom, so it seems only right. There are no doorbell alerts. There are no photos. Stiles means to ask Derek in the morning if he thinks the kids know he’s not there, so they don’t come around, but he wakes up alone.

There’s a box of doughnuts on the counter, though, so he’s secure in assuming that the forces of darkness did not get Derek.

When the loft door rolls open later that morning, Stiles doesn’t look up from his laptop. He waves and Derek makes a vague grunt in greeting, then heads into the kitchen.

“Why do we have grapes in here?” Derek calls.

“Study snacks,” Stiles calls. There’s nothing like sitting down to do homework to make the brain scream that it’s hungry and there absolutely needs to be food immediately. “How do you immediately notice that there’s fruit around? Is it that offensive?”

“It’s just… more color than I usually have in the fridge.”

Stiles groans internally at the thought of Derek’s daily eating habits. He’s willing to bet they mostly reside in that upper portion of the food pyramid. “Have some, they’re good.”

“No.”

“Well bring me some anyway. My brain says I’m hungry.”

Derek brings out the bag and neatly slices through a stem with his claw, pushing the bunch of grapes into Stiles’ hand. Stiles looks up and it about to point out that he can’t just cradle a wad of grapes for an hour and could he have a paper towel please? But his brain shorts out when he sees Derek. He’s got a kiss of a tan on his skin and there’s still a slight sheen of sweat on his shoulders. And he’s wearing that goddamn tank top.

“Uh… where have you been?” Stiles asks when he remembers how to speak.

“Your house. Installing motion-detecting lights.”

Stiles blinks at him. “What? I could have helped. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was faster if I didn’t have to take you to the hospital from falling off a ladder.”

“Rude and uncalled for.”

Derek smirks and leaves the bag of grapes on the table. “I’m gonna get a shower.”

Stiles pushes his laptop away. “I could totally-”

“Finish your homework.” Derek pushes the laptop back. “I’m locking the bathroom door.”

Stiles glares after Derek. Then he wracks his brain and tries to remember if Derek’s bathroom even has a lock. He comes up blank on that one, which makes it super tempting to try and test it. Instead, he shoves a handful of grapes into his mouth and chews viciously and finishes his stupid homework.

 

* * *

 

“I can’t believe you wore a tie,” Derek says as they head into the grocery store. It’s not the first time he’s said so, and Stiles has a feeling it won’t be the last.

“Well, I can’t believe you don’t even own a tie,” he shoots back, grabbing an arm basket. “What the hell do you wear when you’re trying to suck up to someone?”

“The tank top.”

Stiles blinks and glares, elbowing Derek. “Someone who isn’t me, smartass.”

“You’d be surprised how little an issue that is.” Derek follows Stiles back to the deli and takes the basket from him as soon as Stiles sets something inside. Never mind that it’s a pack of prosciutto and weighs almost nothing. Stiles has learned not to argue with Derek’s wolfy brand of chivalry. “What are we making?”

“Prosciutto-wrapped breadsticks.”

Derek raises an eyebrow at him. “You’re making an appetizer?”

“Yes…?”

“Should we bring wine too, since we’re just going to instantly make your dad suspicious?”

Stiles opens his mouth to say something smart in return. All that comes out in a frustrated groan. “Fine, you’re right.” He shoves the package back onto the hook. “But I can’t just cook like normal. That makes him grumpy and then he’ll be in a bad mood.”

Stiles phone buzzes in his pocket.

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -7:12 PM

Stiles vaguely wonders if they’re going to get home and find that his dad has ordered pizza, like a traitor. Either that or some neighbor is coming over to talk to him. If it’s Ms. Samerson, she’ll probably still be there complaining about the hooligans at the end of the block who play basketball (in their own driveway, mind) at all hours of the night (usually until the sun goes down). It’ll buy him some time to figure out what the hell they’re having for dinner.

“What if I make, like, a lot of pasta?” Stiles drums his fingers on the edges of the shelves as he wanders down the back aisle where the refrigerated section is. “Just a gross, obscene amount of pasta. Does that scream that I’m sucking up?”

“What does a gross amount of pasta even look like?” Derek asks, following behind him.

Stiles opens his mouth. Then closes it. “I… don’t know,” he finally admits. Being around werewolves has colored his worldview too much. He can’t think of a single pot in the house that he couldn’t fill to the brim and have emptied by the end of the night with Derek there. “Okay, we’ll work with concrete goals. What if I made several pounds of pasta so he could eat as much as he wanted?”

“Probably gonna come across as sucking up.”

“Dammit.” Stiles sighs and considers the meat section as they pass it. He’s not quite ready to stoop to red meat bribery, but… “Okay, what about chicken thighs? With the skin on and everything?”

Derek gives him that flat, disappointed look. “I feel sorry for your dad.”

“Shut up.” Stiles huffs and pulls out his phone when it buzzes again. Probably his dad threatening to order pizza. Or sending him a gloat picture if he already has.

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -7:20 PM

Stiles stops so abruptly that his sneakers squeak slightly against the linoleum. Derek bumps into him and immediately steps back.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

Stiles looks at him, then back at his phone. He waits.

An elbow catches his ribs sharply. “Breathe,” Derek whispers. Stiles becomes very aware that his lungs are burning and sucks in a hard breath. He looks back at his phone.

7:22 PM.

No photo.

“I think… they’re at the house,” Stiles says slowly, cold dread prickling at the base of his spine. His brain tries to fritz out on him because… no. No, of course not. They never come around when Stiles isn’t there. They know when he’s not there and they never come around. So it must just be… joggers. People walking their dogs in rapid-fire succession. Always joggers and dog-owners. 

“Stiles.” Derek shakes him by his elbow with an urgency that makes Stiles think he blanked out for longer than he thought. “Come on, let’s go.”

Stiles looks at his phone again. 7:24 PM. No photo. He nods quickly and grabs Derek’s forearm, pulling him down the cereal aisle, cutting back to the front of the store.

Mellencamp’s ‘Authority Song’ begins playing from his pocket. Stiles stops short in front of a display of Cap’n Crunch and wrestles his phone free from his pocket. A picture of his dad in the middle of his ‘disapproving, but as the sheriff’ lectures is on the screen. Stiles immediately takes the call.

“Dad! Is everything okay? What’s going on?”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course it is, Stiles. What’s wrong?” Stiles can almost hear the brow-furrow in his dad’s voice. “You sound… keyed up.”

“No! No, just… I’m fine,” Stiles says, chest loosening a little. “Uh… I’m at the grocery store. Any requests on dinner?”

“Grab something from the freezer section and get home. Something’s wrong in the wiring on your lights.”

Stiles feels his chest squeeze tight again. “…what?”

“They keep coming on. No one is even walking by the house.” John sighs on the other end of the line. “There they go again. Get home and help me shut them off before we get complaints from the neighbors. I’ll look at them with you tomorrow once it’s light out.”

Stiles looks at Derek. He’s sure his heart is spiking at some sort of alarming rate because Derek sets a hand on his shoulder and squeezes it before turning him back towards the door and urging him forward again.

“Right. Sorry dad, I’ll… I’ll get them shut off,” Stiles says, fighting to keep his voice calm. A doorbell alert makes his phone buzz. “Maybe… maybe you should go upstairs so you don’t get dizzy or something. Strobes are… strobes are really bad for your eyes. And I don’t mean ‘your’ as in you because you’re old, I mean for everyone.” Stiles is aware he’s rambling. Safer to fill up the silence, though. Not let any space sit empty. “And maybe shut your bedroom door, too.”

“So I have to lock myself away from the malfunctioning lights?” John laughs. “Stiles, what’s gotten into you? Just get home, we’ll-”

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

Stiles’ heart sinks. “Don’t answer that. Dad, go upstairs, okay?”

“What do you mean? It’s probably someone complaining about the lights, that’s all.”

The phone buzzes in Stiles hand. He doesn’t look. Doesn’t need to look to know what the photo will show on the porch. “Dad, I’m serious,” he says, nothing to hold back the urgency in his voice anymore. “Go upstairs. Just leave the door alone.”

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

It’s the same knock. The same one that always comes, like someone is replaying a sound effect. Always the same.

“Dad!”

“Stiles, calm down.” John sighs into the phone and Stiles hears the door open. He has to lean on the shelf beside him. Boxes of Frosted Flakes get knocked askew and fall to his feet. He can feel Derek behind him, hanging onto every word.

“We need to come in and use your phone.” The girl’s voice is faint. Faint and dead and so goddamn unmistakably _hers_.

“Dad, shut the door!”

“Oh… are you lost?” John’s voice sounds… far away.

“We need to call our parents,” she says. “Let us come in.”

“We’ll find your parents,” John says, the Sheriff side trying to take over.

“Dad, they’re not people!” Stiles yells into the phone. “There’s something wrong with them! Shut the door!” There’s a pause on the other end. Stiles strains his ears, hoping for the sound of the door closing.

“Look, why don’t you give me their number.” There’s hesitation in John’s voice. Stiles knows that, he knows the feelings of heavy dread that come from those kids, from them just standing there. Staring down. He knows the alarm bells that go off. “I can call them for you.”

“No. We need to come inside and wait for them.”

Another pause.

“Stiles, I’m gonna let you go,” John says into the phone. “These kids need me to call their p-”

“Don’t let them in!” Stiles doesn’t care that he’s attracting a crowd. Derek is growling at people that get too close, Stiles thinks he might be telling people to back off. Or to fuck off. But he’s keeping them away. “Listen to me! Listen. Shut the door. Shut the door and go upstairs, right now.”

“…Stiles, what’s wrong?” John asks. Stiles feels his chest clench and he bites back a sob. His dad isn’t asking what’s wrong with Stiles.

“They’re… something bad. I don’t know what. And I know they make you want to invite them in, but just… listen to the warning bells, Dad. They can’t come in if you don’t let them.” Stiles can hear in his own ears that he’s babbling. He’s just making noise, but that’s fine. That’s good. Outside stimuli has saved his ass more than once and if he has to stand here and scream into the phone and then never show his face in this store again-

“You need to let us in.”

Stiles’ stomach twists when the boy speaks.

“Dad, shut the door. I thought they were only coming for me. I would… I would have told you about them if I thought they would come for you.” Apology. The meaningless prelude to something bad that’s going to happen anyway, and Stiles’ sinking stomach knows it.

“Let us in to wait for our parents.”

“Dad!” Stiles slams his fist down on the metal shelf. “Shut the door!”

Stiles hears a slow, sliding sound. And then a hard thud that rattles in his ear as his dad’s phone hits the ground.

“You can come in,” his dad says, his voice far away and so… gone.

Stiles sinks to the floor as he listens to the heavy sounds of footsteps walking right beside the phone’s speaker. The door slides shut. Stiles thinks his dad’s phone must have fallen onto the porch because then it’s just quiet. Just the sound of crickets.

“Stiles.” Derek crouches beside him. “Come on, we need to go.”

“He let them in, Derek.” Stiles’ voice sounds hollow in his own ears. He doesn’t want to get up. He doesn’t want to make his legs work. They want in so badly. Always. They always just want inside. And now they are inside. And that has to mean it’s too late.

“So we need to get there quickly.” Derek hauls him to his feet and takes most of his weight as they stumble out of the store.

 

* * *

 

By all rights, the ride to Stiles’ house should have killed them both. Or landed them in jail. There wasn’t a single red light or crosswalk or stop sign that Derek paid attention to. Stiles will always be grateful for that in some part of his brain that he’s going to lock up tight once this is all over because it’s safer not to deal with it. He probably won’t remember to thank Derek for it.

The trip to the house takes 9 agonizing minutes.

Stiles is scrambling out of the car before Derek even has it stopped. Only the seatbelt keeps him from getting likely a nasty sprained ankle from exiting a moving car. Something clicks behind him and the belt slides free (he probably won’t remember to thank Derek for that one either), dumping Stiles into the lawn. He scrambles up and sprints up the steps to the porch. The motion lights flood the yard, so bright that the cold white light almost looks blue. The light casts long shadows across the porch as Stiles grabs the door handle.

Locked.

“Dad!” Stiles slaps his palm against the door, panic rising in his throat. “Dad, can you hear me?” He yanks at the knob, rattles it savagely against the bolts. “I’ll break this fucking door down if I have to!” he yells. Those fuckers can hear him. Of course they can hear him, and now they know he’s good and pissed too. The boneless helplessness from the grocery store seeped out of him in the torturous nine-minute car ride and now the energy in his is vibrating under his skin. “I’ll break a goddamn window, you creepy son of a-”

The door opens.

“…Dad.” Stiles releases the knob numbly. The last thing in the world he expected was for his dad to open the door. Wearing jeans and a Rolling Stones t-shirt. Not bleeding from any orifice. Not vacant and dead-eyed. In fact, he looks kind of pissed.

“What the hell, Stiles?” John grabs his forearm and tugs him inside. “The neighbors could probably hear every word of that. Are you trying to get them to call the cops? On the sheriff’s house?”

Stiles shakes himself out of his stupor and yanks free of his dad’s hold, rushing into the house. “Where are they?” He runs into the living room, half expecting to see those kids there, sitting on the sofa, just… being there. Being inside. But he’s not surprised that they’re not there. He’s actually fairly sure they’re not anywhere. The house feels normal, and nothing ever feels normal when they’re around.

The heat of Derek at his back makes him sigh and slouch forward, resting his hands on his thighs. “They’re gone, aren’t they?”

“They’re gone.”

Stiles sighs again. The panic and the adrenaline are both gone now, which doesn’t leave him anything else to feel except numb.

“What in the world is the matter with you two?” John asks, coming to join them. “I’ve got you yelling at the neighborhood,” he says to Stiles. Then he turns on Derek. “And you bolting out of a muscle car with fangs out. Are you trying to get us run out of the neighborhood?”

“Dad.” Stiles grabs his arms just below his shoulders, mostly just to feel that he’s still warm and pliable and feels solid. And human. “What happened? Where are they?”

“Where are… those weird kids?”

It takes Stiles a minute to decide his dad isn’t joking. “Yeah, dad. The demon spawn from the doorstep. Where are they? What happened?”

“They were… weird kids,” John sighs, rubbing his forehead. “They said they needed to call their parents. And… are you wearing a tie?” He tugs the length of blue silk hanging from Stiles’ neck, then immediately examines the knot. “Jesus, Stiles, this is a real tie. What did you do?”

Derek snorts from the kitchen where he’s sniffing the landline. “Told you.”

“Shut up, Derek!” Stiles tugs his tie away. “Can we focus first on the creepy kids you let into the house? What the hell happened? Where did they go?” God, Stiles just hopes his dad isn’t about to tell him that they didn’t go anywhere because then he has to start playing hide and seek with those creeps.

“They left.” John shrugs, like he didn’t just have a brush with hellspawn. “They came inside, they sat on the couch. They just… stared at the floor the whole time. I kept asking them if they wanted to use the phone, or give me a number so I could call their parents, but they just… said their parents were on the way.” He frowns and rubs his forehead again, like it’s just dawning on him that what he’s saying falls squarely under ‘fucking weird.’ “It was… strange.”

“Yeah… they’re weird,” Stiles agrees. He lets go of his dad’s arms and backs off. Pushing isn’t going to do much. Proximity to those things has left his head spinning more than once, so if his dad was in the house with them… Stiles shuts that line of thinking down. They left. They didn’t hurt anyone. His dad is fine. “Come on, I’ll get you some water.”

Herding his dad out of the living room has the added bonus of giving Derek free reign to sniff the couch where the kids were sitting. Stiles leans his hip against the table, watching his dad sip the ice water in his hand. It seems like his dad is losing color. Getting paler, taking on a sheen of sweat. “You’re definitely okay?” he asks quietly. Maybe it’s just the weird persuasion wearing off, like realizing that you barely avoided death after swerving to miss another car. Maybe he looked this bad when Derek has found him too.

It doesn’t feel quite like that, though. It doesn’t feel like this is the safe part afterwards.

It takes half an hour for pizza to arrive. Derek spends the time switching between the couch and the porch, looking for a scent trail that he doesn’t pick up. When he finally comes back inside after the pizza guy leaves, he just gives Stiles a minute shake of his head.

The coughing starts during the first slice. First it’s just throat-clearing. Then it’s coughing into a napkin. Then the coughs turn deeper.

Wetter.

John sets his pizza down- more like drops it onto his plate and makes no move to fix it when it lands upside-down, toppings sliding free to stick to the paper plate. He tries to cover his mouth with the wadded napkin, and turns his head for good measure as the coughing rattles from deep in his chest. He pounds a fist against his chest, hard enough that Stiles can hear the dull impact.

The coughing still comes.

Stiles drops his pizza and scrambles out of his chair, heading into the kitchen for more water. Something temperate, something from the tap, something his dad can drink right away in large gulps. Cleanse whatever’s lodged itself in his chest.

In the minute he’s gone, Stiles comes back to find his dad covered in a fine sheen of sweat, sitting sideways in his chair and doubled over as he coughs. Derek is behind him, slapping him on the back to try and help, werewolf strength carefully controlled.

“Stiles, call an ambulance,” he says, giving Stiles a look. His eyes say he’s not saying everything he’s smelling. Or hearing. “Something is wrong.”

“No, no…” John braces a hand on his thigh for leverage as the next wave hits him. Something rattles wetly in his throat. “I’m fine, I just… something is just…”

And then he just… wilts. The arm bracing his weight goes slack and he sags out of his chair. Derek catches him around the chest while the first cry is still caught in Stiles’ throat, saving him from slamming his skull on the ground.

“Dad!” Stiles crouches beside his dad as Derek lowers him carefully to the floor. He can hear the wet edge in his breathing now, wheezing from the back of his throat that sounds horrible, but it at least tells Stiles that he’s still breathing. Still breathing, good.

“Stay with him,” Derek says, setting a hand on Stiles’ back. Stiles feels a brief squeeze before Derek is gone. Derek’s voice in the kitchen sounds very far away as he calls for the ambulance.


	3. Chapter 3

Cancer, the doctors say. 4th stage lung cancer. They’re stunned. The sheriff hasn’t touched a cigarette in over 25 years. Must be a highly aggressive strain because there was no sign of it during his last physical. Highly aggressive, because there it is. The large, ugly mass sits wrapped around his dad’s right lung in the x-rays that sit on the lightbox. Solid, visual proof.

The doctors point to the left lung, to wispy strands that look like shadows. More cancer, they tell him. Metastasized.

Cancer, they say. Malignant. End stages. Must be highly aggressive. Snuck right up on him.

Like it’s some kind of fucking burglar in the night.

 

* * *

 

Stiles spends 3 nights in the hospital, at his dad’s bedside. Derek stays in the hallway. Stiles joins him whenever the nurses kick him out to run tests or do anything that falls under some privacy clause. He paces until Derek makes him sit down.

He does not think about it. He does not let any part of it sink in where it can grow roots. It can’t grow roots because then it becomes real.

He checks his phone relentlessly. Every alert comes with a timely photo attached to it- 3 well-wishing neighbors and a Jehovah’s witness. No stalker notices. No creepy kids.

As soon as Melissa leaves on day 4, the night nurse makes Stiles go home. She’s the brusque one, who always uses just a little too much starch in her scrubs. No matter how pastel the color, they mold around her like armor.

“Melissa is not doing you any favors,” she says, firmly shutting the door to his dad’s room. Stiles has been in the half-lit room since this morning and the fluorescents in the hallway make him squint while he’s trying to glare at her.

“I think she does a great job,” he says evenly. He can’t shout without rousing his dad, maybe shaking the good high of the pain meds. She probably knows that, too. “And as far as I know, the visitors policy here is at a patient’s discretion.”

“Or a nurse’s,” she replies tartly. “You need to able to go home. This is not a recovery stay.”

Stiles’ arm twitches. He doesn’t know if he was actually going to try to push a nurse. Or worse. Derek catches his elbow too quickly for him to ever know for sure.

“Stiles. Come on,” he says, voice hard. Stiles can at least feel him glaring at the nurse, which is kind of satisfying. “We’ll come back after her shift.”

 

* * *

 

The best way Stiles can conceive of to spend his first hour back in his house is crouched in the back of his dad’s closet, thumbing through old medical records.

“Blood work, fine,” Stiles grumbles, flipping through the pages. “Cholesterol a little high, but nothing serious.” No surprises. Stiles read this record after his dad’s last physical. He reads all of them.

Derek stands in the doorway, blocking out the lamplight with his bulk. “Stiles.”

“’ _Patient is in excellent condition and managing the stress level of his job admirably_ ,’” Stiles recites, because he doesn’t need the light to read that part. He knows what it says. “He was fine, Derek!”

“It won’t fix him just because you can prove that.” Derek crouches down and holds his hand out. The bottle he’s holding rattles gently. “Come on. You’re 4 days off your meds and you need a shower. And to eat. And then we regroup.”

Stiles relents and takes the bottle. And the shower. He’s running on four days of adrenaline and really shitty focus right now, but he can concede that he probably reeks. Also he might be close to clinically starving. He remembers Derek pushing various things to eat at him over the past few days, but he can’t remember if he actually ate any of them.

Stiles pulls on a fresh shirt and is just about to ask Derek if he wants to hit a drive-thru when his phone buzzes.

[Your doorbell has detected a visitor.] -7:20 PM

Stiles’ instincts kick in like he’s been waiting for this. Maybe he has been. He grabs his bat and sprints down the stairs. He doesn’t even hesitate at the door, just yanks it open. The porch is empty and the boards pound under his bare feet as he charges down the stairs. Somewhere behind him, the back door in the kitchen bangs open and he can hear Derek rush out and into the yard. They both circle the house, Derek sniffing the air, Stiles digging through the bushes on the side of the yard. There’s nothing there.

“Don’t fucking get shy now,” Stiles growls, more to himself since… well, he’s the only one around.

“They’re not here,” Derek says to Stiles’ butt since Stiles is upended into the shrubs to get a look all the way down.

“They still could be! Why do we have so many goddamn plants around here?!” Stiles squirms and kicks his legs until Derek obliges and hauls him out of the bushes, setting him back on his feet. “Why did this neighborhood get designed chock full of places for creepy shit to hide?” He kicks the bushes, but they’re sparse and it’s nowhere near satisfying. He kicks it again, and then again, and finally takes his bat to Mr. Drummond’s topiaries.

“Stiles.”

“They could! Be! In! Here!” Stiles punctuates every word with a vicious swing until the perfect rectangular shape begins to take on a more ‘tin can dented to the point of being marked down’ look. Then Derek catches him around the waist and drags him back inside.

His phone is silent the rest of the night.

 

* * *

 

"He's awake," Melissa says when she meets Stiles and Derek just inside the entrance doors. Whatever nasty thing Stiles was planning to say about Nurse Ratched from the night before (he had several ideas) dies on his lips. His throat feels like cotton.

"Like... awake-awake?" he asks carefully. It wasn't like his dad was in a coma, but Melissa was making sure he got the good opioids, so they weren't exactly having fluid conversations.

"Awake-awake. He wants to talk to you." She doesn't say it like it's a good thing. Or a bad thing. But her face tells Stiles everything he needs to know. She squeezes his upper arm gently before nodding him in the direction of the palliative care wing.

Stiles doesn’t know how long he stands outside the stark, white door, looking at the ‘STILINSKI, JOHN’ stencils on the nameplate. “I can’t do this,” he tells Derek. He can hear the machines beeping out here. He can smell the cold, sterile air that seeps out from under the door. He can’t do this. Not again.

“You can do it.”

Stiles shakes his head. When Derek wraps an arm around him, he almost lets his knees give out. Derek would take his weight. Wouldn’t even comment on it. And Stiles really just… wants to sit down on the floor and not get back up. Not this again.

“Stiles. Just in case,” Derek murmurs beside his ear.

Stiles steadies himself and draws in a breath. His spine is made of steel, he tells himself. It can’t bend. It can’t stoop. It will always make him stand perfectly tall. It’s the same game he used to play with himself ten years ago. Spine of steel. Stand up tall. People who stands tall are fine and no one has to worry about them. He grabs the doorknob and makes himself turn it, pushing the door open.

John turns to look towards the door and smiles. Stiles almost wishes he wouldn’t. Smiling makes the dark spaces under his eyes so much more apparent. It’s like they sink in, like there’s nothing left to hold them up. He looks so… empty. Stiles has the horrible idea that he’s being cored out every time they leave the hospital, and there’s less of him left every day.

“Stiles. Derek. Come in.” He motions them into the room. The monitor on the tip of his finger sags, the lightweight plastic too heavy for him to keep aloft. Stiles comes inside. “Derek. You too.” There’s enough Sheriff still in his voice that Derek swallows whatever excuse he was about to make and also steps inside. He closes the door quietly behind him.

“Come. Sit.” John turns his head back to look up at the ceiling. Stiles makes it to the plastic chair and kind of… falls into it. Derek has ahold of him by his elbow to keep him upright. His dad’s breaths are shallow just from the greeting. The machines are beeping steadily. A tiny chorus of mechanical beeping. So many things being monitored. So many things that might slip up.

“It was those kids, Dad,” Stiles says immediately. “The ones who came into the house. They did… they did something. I don’t know what, we don’t know exactly what they are, but they did this.”

“Well, they gave off a creepy enough vibe, didn’t they?” John chuckles softly, but the sound quickly turns into a cough that comes from deep in his chest. Stiles lurches out of his chair and reaches for the nurse call button, but his dad swats at the air in the vague direction of his arm. “I’m okay, kid. Just…” John holds up a finger as he turns his head away to cough again. “Just grab… the tissues, will you?”

Stiles snatches the box of tissues off the nightstand, grabs several out and hands them his dad. When John lays back down, Stiles can only see the faintest hint of red around his lips. He doesn’t crane his neck to try and see the hand his dad was coughing into. “We’re gonna get them.”

John makes a humming sound that Stiles thinks is supposed to be agreement.

“We are. Derek and I already have-”

“I know you will, son.” John pats Stiles’ arm and leaves his hand there. His palm is dry and cool, the skin as thin as paper. Stiles immediately sets his hand over it and clasps it as hard as he dares. “I know you’re on the case. Now tell me about you and Derek.”

It takes Stiles a minute to register that. “…What?”

The chuckle is weaker this time. Maybe on purpose, so he doesn’t spur another coughing fit. Stiles remembers that his mom used to do stuff like that, so nothing ever looked as bad as it really was. “I’m not a complete idiot, Stiles. You thought I really believed you were staying at Scott’s house three and four times a week?”

“I… maybe?”

“You used Scott as your excuse every time?” Derek asks, raising an eyebrow. Stiles elbows him.

“Don’t judge me. I got complacent. You didn’t have to tell anyone anything, so shut up.”

“I assumed Melissa would have told me if you were halfway moved into her house.” John pats Stiles’ arm with just his fingers. “So what was the big announcement?” Stiles just furrows his brow until John raises his other hand and taps his own collarbone. “The tie. What was the tie for?”

Right. The tie. Dinner. That feels like it happened years ago to someone else. “Me and Derek… well, one, we were going to finally tell you.”

“Hm.” John smiles faintly. “I absolutely would have acted surprised. Promise.”

Stiles laughs a little, and it surprises even him when it bubbles up. “Sure. You would’ve done a shit job of it.”

“Language.” The fingers on Stiles’ arm tug sharply on his arm hair in admonishment, making him hiss in surprise. “So that was one. And two?”

Stiles glances at Derek, who looks just as lost as him. Now really isn’t the time to talk about that. Talking about a major life event with someone who has demon-induced cancer just seems… depraved. “Uh…”

“Come on. Did he propose yet?”

Stiles startles in his seat. Derek looks as terrified as Stiles has ever seen him. “What? No! No, no way. We haven’t been dating that long.” He scratches at the back of his neck uneasily. “Well, speaking of me moving into Melissa’s house, we uh…”

“Moving in together? That’s a big step.” John makes a face. “Don’t tell me you’re going to live in that warehouse. That thing has to have vermin in it. Or lead paint. Asbestos.”

“Well, we’re on the top floor, so those rats would have to be super dedicated.” Stiles squeezes his dad’s hand gently. “And I never have to fight anyone for a parking space.”

“Well. You’d better at least get the paint checked.”

“You can tell us everything wrong with it when you help me move my stuff over,” Stiles says, keeping his voice firm.

“Of course. Now, you listen to me. He’s a good kid, okay? I want you to watch out for him. And be good to him. Understand?”

Stiles hears Derek swallow behind him. “Yes, sir. I will.”

John opens his eyes enough to look over at Derek. “I wasn’t talking to you, son.” He looks down at Stiles. “Well?”

Stiles feels his eyes trying to burn as he nods. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” John sighs out a slow breath and closes his eyes again. “Now I just need to rest my eyes for a bit. Smuggle me in some real food when you come see me tomorrow, okay? Pretty sure there’s not a salt shaker in this place.”

Stiles nods tightly. His throat has clenched shut and he can’t risk any words because of the strangled way they’ll come out.

“We will,” Derek says behind him. “Anything you want.”

“Got you a keeper,” John murmurs. Stiles feels the hand on his arm go lax. It’s a long time before his knees feel strong enough for him to stand up and place his dad’s arm back on the bed.

 

* * *

 

“Stiles.”

Derek’s voice sounds very far away. Never mind that he’s sitting directly to Stiles’ right, in the passenger side of the Jeep. He’s washed out by a rushing sound. In hindsight, hearing his blood in his own ears has never been a good thing, but the magic of tunnel vision is that hindsight has to fuck off until much, much later.

“Stiles!” Derek uses his elbow to nudge his shoulder. Hard.

“Ow! What?” Stiles snaps.

“You’ve been clenching your jaw and driving for ten minutes,” Derek growls. “Fucking talk to me before I pull the emergency brake.”

“I’ll un-pull it,” Stiles growls back.

“I’ll rip if off.” Derek wraps a hand around it. “Final warning.”

“Fine! What?” Stiles comes to a hard stop at a red light that makes them both rock forward. The Jeep’s shocks creak in protest under them.

“Talk to me.”

Stiles makes himself pull a breath in to loosen his chest. His jaw does ache, he realizes. The silence is probably freaking Derek out. “It’s those kids, Derek. They did this.”

“I know,” Derek says. Stiles supposes he’s been saying that a lot lately. And even a perpetually-healthy werewolf knows that cancer doesn’t work this way.

“So now they’re laying low. Or… whatever. Maybe they were hunting and now they… ate.” A creature that ate someone’s health was probably a thing. The light turns, and Roscoe’s tires squeal when Stiles stomps on the gas.

“And you’re driving like a bat out of hell… where?”

“ I’m gonna call in a favor.”

 

* * *

 

“Stiles. Derek.” Deaton greets them, looking up from the files on his desk. He drops the one in his hands and stands up. “Stiles, I’m so sorry to hear about you dad.”

“Then help me find the creepy kids with black eyes,” Stiles says.

“Kids with black eyes?”

Stiles sets his hands on the edge of the desk and leans over it. “I’m sure your Druid sense has been pinging for over a week now. If you didn’t know what it was before, now you do. Kids with black eyes. Need permission to come into a house. Once you let them in, you get sick.”

“That’s… very troubling,” Deaton says, sitting back down at his desk. “Have you consulted the Bestiary about-”

“They’ve gone into hiding,” Stiles says, cutting him off. The Bestiary hasn’t been helpful. There are a few breadcrumbs about demons being unable to perfectly imitate a human form, about pestilence that leaves rot in its wake, about vampires who can’t cross a threshold, but everything peters out before it turns solid. There is no drawing of a creepy blank-eyed kid and a bunch of nice, neat information on what the fuck they are. “And we need to find them.”

“And you think I can… what? Just find anything that walks into Beacon Hills?” Deaton shakes his head. “Stiles. I’m not a GPS. That’s not how magic works. At least not mine.”

“Then tell us how to draw them out.” Stiles leans further over the desk, feeling the edge of it bite into his palms. “You owe me.”

Deaton raises his eyebrows. “I owe you?”

“After you tried to dangle me in front of a mirror monster like bait, yeah. You owe me,” Stiles hisses.

“Savagery is not always the answer.” Deaton folds his hands on the desk. “Just because you found it more expedient to kill something doesn’t mean that I was out to get you. Or that Scott was.”

Stiles yanks the collar of his shirt aside the display the four scars in his shoulder. The lines run into each other from the monster’s mangled fingers. “Does this look like she was just gonna take me to her place and show me around?”

Deaton looks at the scars without flinching. He looks back up at Stiles. “It looks like you were touched by something very dangerous,” he says evenly, ignoring the growling from Derek. “I can’t say for certain what the intentions of a creature like that were.”

Stiles lets go of the collar of his shirt. He’s not surprised that Deaton is dancing around the subject. The answers they get from Druids tends to have more ugly twists than a Shyamalan movie. “So let’s talk about balance, then. What did you need? Did you need me dead? Gone? Did you just need Scott to be mad at me and Derek? Was the pack too strong once Liam got added and you needed to break it apart a little?”

Deaton says nothing and Stiles sets his jaw, feeling the tension aching behind his molars. His fingers clench on the desk, blunt nails digging into the wood.

“Or are you trying to balance something right now?” His voice comes out guttural in his own ears, rattling in his throat.

Derek’s hands land heavily on the desk beside Stiles’ and his claws gouge in deeply. It startles the world back into focus a little for Stiles. “If you’re planning to let John die because you need something to even out somewhere in your fucked-up scheme-”

Deaton holds a hand up abruptly. Stiles feels his pulse beating against the side of his neck so hard that his vision swims a little when he tries to bring his focus back around.

“I don’t know what these… kids are,” Deaton says calmly, completely ignoring the accusations. “But I have felt something stirring for the past few weeks. I believe it would be dangerous to leave it unchecked.” He stands up from his desk. “I may be able to help you.”

 

* * *

 

“I don’t trust him,” Derek growls, eyes glowing blue to see better in the dark outside the windows of the Jeep.

“How could you not trust a guy who gave us such a nice rock?” Stiles scoffs. He shoots a disdainful look at the chunk of raw quartz sitting in the cup holder. It’s a bulky mass that looks like three of the nice, neat crystals sold as necklaces got melted together. And never got cleaned, ever. Or polished.

“Is it doing anything?” Derek asks, also glancing at it.

“Well, Deaton said it had amplification properties, so I guess it’s amplifying things.” Stiles had asked Deaton what it was going to amplify. The answer had been a cryptic and wholly unhelpful ‘Everything.’ and Stiles really can’t even bring himself to be surprised by that. Their friendly neighborhood Emissary has always supplied poisons and trinkets, not answers.

“So what are we going to do with it?”

“We’re taking it to my dad,” Stiles says simply. “Deaton said this will help. And we want it to help my dad, so… there. There we go.” Stiles wishes he sounded more confident about that. They usually have a little longer to figure out the cryptic clues they’re given. Not now. Right now, Stiles has no idea how much time he has left.

“Right. Good idea.” Derek probably means that at least it’s an idea, period. Stiles will take it.

“Maybe it can amplify their shitty drugs or something,” he says, grabbing the rock out of the cup holder. It’s cold in his hand. Lifeless. A rock. It doesn’t feel magical or mystical, it doesn’t hum or glow or do anything, really. It just-

“Stiles.”

Stiles snaps his attention back to the road. Two figures, far ahead, at the edge of his headlights. They’re standing in the darkness in between two street lamps, only barely caught when the road causes the Jeep to bounce a little. Waiting. Stiles feels his heart begin to pound.

He puts his foot down on the gas. Hard.

“Stiles!” Derek braces a hand against the ceiling. “Are you sure??”

“It’s them!” Stiles feels Derek’s arm pressed against his chest, keeping him pinned back in his seat as the figures rush up in the headlights. Just as the light bounces off of empty, black eyes, he slams his foot down on the brake.

**BAM.**

The Jeep’s brakes scream under him and the impact to the hood reverberates back down Stiles’ arms and spine. Derek’s arm keeps him firmly against his seat until the Jeep stops completely. Something is laying prone in the pool of light two street lamps ahead.

“Watch out for the other one,” Derek growls as Stiles shoves his door open, pulling his bat out from the backseat.

The pavement crunches under Stiles’ sneakers and he can hear his own breath turning shallow in his ears. Something is wrong. Something is so wrong, this is bad. He hit someone. He might have hurt a person. Might have hurt a little kid. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Stiles forces the panic down and tightens his grip on his bat just above the tape as he stops beside the Jeep’s headlights and peers into the darkness.

“We need a ride.”

Stiles startles back several steps, colliding with Derek’s chest, staring down at the wheel of the Jeep. The girl is there. Just sitting there with her back to them. She’s leaning her head against the bumper because the Jeep is parked on top of her elbow. She’s not screaming. Or crying. Just sitting there. It’s wrong. It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong.

She tries to turn to look at them. She looks at the Jeep, and then her own arm when she can’t move. Something in her shoulder pops as she twists herself around at an angle she shouldn’t be able to.

“We need a ride. We want to go to the library.”

Stiles feels his breath trying to catch in his chest. She’s twisted herself around to face them. There’s a dent in her chest. It just… caves in under her shirt where the Jeep hit her, in a way that a ribcage… can’t. Shouldn’t. The headlights cast half her face in shadow, the other black eye stark in the beam. She doesn’t squint from the light right beside her head.

“You’re hurt,” Stiles says, but he’s not sure why he uses that word. She’s not hurt. She doesn’t seem to be able to feel pain. She’s… damaged. “You can’t go to the library.”

“Our parents said we could go. We need a ride.”

“No.” Stiles fills his lungs with the memory of that cold, sterile hospital room. Holds onto that rage. Don’t give her anywhere to let the suggestion take root. Stay angry.

“The boy,” Derek growls beside him. Stiles looks over at the figure crumpled under the street light 10 yards away. It’s moving.

Stiles reaches behind the driver’s seat. “In or out, Derek?” he asks, pulling the jar out of the backseat leaving his bat behind. He opens the lid, hearing Derek growl slightly at the smell of mountain ash (and pickles because that smell just never washes out, ever). “I know, I’m sorry.” He means it too. He’s made Derek get way too up close and personal with this stuff too much already. And now he’s going to do it again.

“In,” Derek says flatly, keeping his blue eyes trained on the figure ahead of them. “Hurry.”

Stiles glances over his shoulder and sees the thing pulling itself upright. The silhouette is staggering and unsteady as Stiles goes around the back of his Jeep, powder slipping through his fingers to form a circle around the Jeep. He makes it to the other side just in time to see it limp out of the light cast by a street lamp.

“Stiles.”

“I’m hurrying.” In the street lamp closest to them, Stiles can see the thing moving more steadily. 5 yards. It disappears out of the lamplight. Stiles knows how these things move when no one is looking. He quickens his pace to close the circle. He’s right- dust is still falling from his fingers when the boy emerges from the darkness. He stands right at the edge of the circle.

But he doesn’t cross it.

“We need a ride.”

Stiles swallows the sour feeling in his stomach. The boy’s shoulders are set too far back now. His collarbone caves in like the girl’s chest. There are long scrapes across his cheek, with gravel embedded but… no blood. Just holes. Rips that are dark underneath where the Jeep’s headlights hit them. It reminds Stiles of scoring the skin on a chicken thigh just before it gets cooked. Just meat.

The sense of Wrong feels like a kick to the stomach. How did these things ever seem human at all?

“We want to go to the library,” the girl says. “Take us to the library.”

Stiles hangs onto the anger, the sound of the hospital machines beeping to shrug off the sense of dread. He can’t let it sink into his bones. He doesn’t think Deaton has another rock to help them find these two again if he freezes up now.

Derek crouches down, getting right on the girl’s level in a way that makes Stiles’ stomach turn. He can’t imagine looking that closely into those black eyes. He doesn’t want to look closer at the shapes that made up a human-looking body, now pushed out of alignment.

“You’re going to fix what you’ve done,” he says, tone a low growl.

“Let us in,” she says in her toneless voice. “It won’t take long.”

Something inside Stiles snaps, very quietly.

They’re just going to keep saying that. They’re going to keep saying the same things forever.

The worn leather of the driver’s side seat creaks softly under Stiles’ knee as he leans into the back seat and digs under the seat. His fingers grope against crumbs and lost pens until he finds the smooth rubber of the heavy clamp and hauls it out.

“Stiles, what are you doing?” Derek asked, watching Stiles shut the door and make his way back to the front, one cable scraping along the ground as it trails behind him.

Stiles pops the hood of the Jeep. “I want to find out if she can say anything else.”

The duct tape holding half the engine together reflects back at him in the yellow street light. Stiles has been under this hood a lot. He knows what it feels like to mishandle the jumper cables when they’re attached to the battery. It’s a jolt. It’s surprising. But it only kills people in Hollywood.

He also knows the parts that _do_ hurt.

There are weak orange sparks popping from the ignition coil. The plastic case around it is cracked, and Stiles hasn’t had time to replace it. Luckily. A battery is about 12 volts. The ignition coil is… more. A lot more. He checks that everything he’s touching on the jumper cable is the rubber handles, then bashes the casing with the heavy clamp.

_crack._

The plastic, already damaged and weak, gives way easily, and the casing pieces disappear into the rest of the engine. He gets the black clamp attached to the negative terminal before Derek realizes what he’s doing.

Derek growls. “Stiles, don’t!”

Stiles stretches the jaws of the red clamp wide and yanks his hand away as it closes around the positive terminal. Nothing explodes right away. Roscoe’s engine idles in its familiar, faithful chug. Until Stiles grabs the loose ends of both clamps, grips onto the rubber for dear life, and touches the metal together.

The Jeep makes a horrible metallic screeching sound that grates on the inside of Stiles’ skull and sparks begin to pop where metal touches metal. Ignoring the nasty rattling sound from his Jeep, Stiles turns his attention to the girl.

“Fix what you did to my dad,” he says steadily. The girl does not have any expression. Stiles doesn’t think she can form them. But she does move her head just a little as she looks at the cables. Then at Stiles. Then the cables.

“Our parents-”

“Are your parents the ones who can fix this?” Stiles crouches down and presses the metal together longer. The engine groans and sparks rain down. They reflect on her black sclera. Stiles isn’t sure if he can actually feel electricity singing under the rubber handles or if his brain is doing that. “How hard is it to make these things you’re wearing?” he calls over his shoulder. “These human suits. Are your parents going to be angry if I fry one of them?”

“Yes.”

Stiles’ stomach still clenches a little when the boy speaks. He turns his head to look at him. Derek keeps his eyes trained on the girl, but Stiles sees him turn his head just enough that his ear faces the boy. “So you _can_ answer me. Can your parents fix what you did?”

The boy says nothing.

Stiles mashes the clamps together again and Roscoe’s engine grinds angrily as fat, white sparks pop and spit, then gutter out on the pavement. “What do you think happens when I clip one to the metal zipper on her coat?!” he snarls, his voice taking on a nasty rattle in the back of his throat. “Answer me or you get to tell your parents that you lost the other suit.”

Derek grabs the back of the girl’s neck and shoves her closer, the clamps pressing into the bridge of her nose. The skin sizzles but the smell is like burning… something. Not skin. This new pressure on her twisted posture makes things pop, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “Last chance.”

The boy takes a step back from the line of mountain ash. “Yes.”

“Stiles,” Derek growls, but Stiles is already lowering the clamps and lifting his head. The air has turned thick and still, like it does right before a nasty storm rolls over them. He’s suddenly aware that there have been no other cars. He and Derek have, for all appearances, run over two children. Taken one hostage. Even if Stiles was too distracted to notice another car, surely… surely one would have stopped.

Where are the other cars?

The streetlight at the end of the road blinks out.

“Derek,” he says urgently.

Derek glances over his own shoulder, then looks the other way. “Behind you too.”

Stiles cranes his neck to look back just in time to see the second street light from the end sputter a few times. Then it dies. He turns and looks back at the boy. The thing stands as expressionless as ever, but his black eyes are trained on the girl.

“Are your parents coming?” Stiles asks, watching another streetlight flicker out. The hair on the back of his neck stands up as the darkness begins to press in. Derek has already stood up and faced the void that’s crushing in around them.

The boy takes another step away from the circle. “Yes.”

The streetlight in front of them blinks and is gone. Stiles sees the light in his periphery do the same. The one overhead stutters violently.

Stiles stumbles up and backwards a step, fumbling behind him inside the Jeep. The leather of the seat, the grimy plastic of the floor mat… the cold, hard goddamn rock, abandoned in the footwell. He really hopes Deaton doesn’t just need him dead for balance. Shoving the crystal into his pocket, Stiles brandishes the two clamps over his head like weapons, sparks pouring over him as he kicks a line through the mountain ash. “FINE! LET’S GO!” he screams into the darkness.

The light above them gutters out.

It feels like the darkness is thrown on them like a blanket, too hot and too heavy, with something viciously pressing it down too tight. Stiles feels like the air itself is squeezing his chest. It surges into his lungs, clenching them, and tries to fill his chest to bursting. Stiles’ heart hammers against his ribs and little tendrils of dread prickle in his stomach. There’s nothing there for clamps or claws to dig into. Whatever kind of weapon he was supposed to bring to this fight, he didn’t bring it.

He can’t see Derek. The Jeep’s headlights only cut a few feet into the thick black before they’re lost. He can’t hear him either, hasn’t heard him for too long. Not a growl. Not a snarl.

Stiles lungs begin to burn under the crushing weight of the dark. Either the sparks are getting dimmer or his vision is. Stiles’ brain can’t separate the two. 

Derek, he dragged Derek into this with him. He didn’t just take the crystal to his dad.

His dad, who’s expecting them. Both of them. They’re supposed to sneak junk food in for him. He’ll be lonely, surrounded by beeping machines. The smell of cheap floor cleaner. The tepid hospital water that comes in plastic cups, half full, with a plain white straw. Stiles thinks of the tone the morphine machine makes if the button is pressed too soon, telling the patient ‘not yet.’ Until the nurses just take the timer off. Until there’s so little time left that the only right thing to do is let it flow freely.

Stiles knees buckle from the weight pressing into him everywhere. He loses his grip on the cables, and they clatter somewhere far below him on the street, as useful there as they had been at all. Roscoe’s headlight presses into his back, casting hard rays of light on both sides of him. The crystal digs at his hip.

His dad won’t know what happened to them. He’ll wonder where Stiles is for… however long he has left.

Roscoe’s headlights begin to burn brighter. They hum in Stiles’ ears and feel like the last two beams of light in the world, but they wash out the street around them in white. The small of his back turns hot as the headlights begin to buzz. Something metal begins to burn.

Derek’s weight slams into Stiles just as the headlights burst. The pavement knocks the wind from his lungs, even with Derek’s arm across his chest to take the worst of it. The shattered glass pelts off the asphalt around them and Roscoe makes one last piteous groan before the chugging in his engine stops. A few weak yellow sparks fall from the sockets of the headlights, dead before they ever find the ground.

The smell of burning metal eases. A breeze carries it away, carries the mountain ash away, carries the crushing stillness… away.

“Are you okay?” Derek asks from on top of him. He doesn’t attempt to move.

Stiles sucks air into his starving lungs. “They’re gone.”

“Stiles.”

“I’m okay.” He pushes at Derek. “Off. The kids are gone. Everything is… everything is gone.”

“I know.” Derek sits up and leans back against the bumper of the Jeep, helping Stiles do the same. Stiles drops his head back against the metal, still warm under his scalp. He closes his eyes and waits for something to happen. This is the part where something happens. Always.

Lights are the first thing to happen. White headlights that slow, and then stop right in front of them, making Stiles squint and turn his head away a little. Then the red and blue lights come on, lighting up the darkness.

“Stiles? Derek?”

Stiles sits up slightly. “Jordan?” he asks, hearing Derek growl, probably in response to Stiles’ heartbeat spiking again. “Why are you here? …Is it my dad?”

Jordan’s face is only dimly illuminated from the headlights and the large flashlight in his hand, but Stiles can still see his features soften. “No. No, I’m…” Jordan gestures around the dark street. “No harbinger motives. Strictly a police call about the failings of our municipal services. I don’t suppose all this is as simple as you hitting a generator?”

“Yeah, not… not quite.” Stiles lets his head drop back against the Jeep with a ‘thunk.’ “Sorry. Lights and stuff usually come back on at the end, y’know?”

Jordan lights two road flares, the flames catching the orange glint in his eyes. “Alright. Both of you, into the back of the cruiser.”

“I can’t leave my Jeep,” Stiles protests, even as Derek is already hauling him to his feet.

“You can’t sit in the middle of a pitch dark road,” Jordan counters, dropping the flares on either side of Roscoe. Stiles hears him calling for backup on his shoulder mic before he’s shoved into the back of the cruiser. Derek sits in the seat beside him, definitely blocking the most convenient way out. Jordan follows them back to rummage in the trunk for more flares, tossing a snack-sized bag of barbecue chips into the backseat when he emerges.

“Thanks,” Stiles sighs.

“We’ve got someone coming for your Jeep. And the station is already taking bets on the lights being another electromagnetic phenomenon.”

“You’re the best.” There really is no substitute for someone in authority steering attention away from the ‘maybe it’s monsters’ explanation that’s usually true in Beacon Hills.

Jordan holds up the flares. “I need to go set these at intervals. You’re staying put.”

“He’s staying put,” Derek agrees, exchanging nods with the deputy.

“Fine,” Stiles grumbles, ripping open the bag of chips. He’s not desperate to leave, anyway. His Jeep is here, and he’s got nowhere to go that makes sprinting off into the darkness seem like a good idea. With the overhead light chasing most of the shadows out of the backseat, it feels damn near cozy compared to that vast, pitch black street out there.

“How did you know the mountain ash would work?” Derek mutters, taking a handful of the chips once they’re alone.

“I didn’t.” Things have been able to cross it before. With their luck, they’ll run into things that can cross it again.

“Did you know if they were dangerous to take on in a fight? Or if it was safe to be sealed inside a ring of mountain ash with one?”

Stiles scowls at him as he chews a mouthful of spicy, crispy goodness. “Is there a single thing in Beacon Hills that it’s actually safe for that? That’s totally not a fair question.”

“You were reckless,” Derek says flatly. “You don’t get fair questions when you’re reckless.”

“Like you said, everything can be hurt. And they’re obviously pretty beholden to boundaries.” Stiles shrugs. “Better question is what the hell scared their parents off. Pretty sure it wasn’t my awesome jumper cables.”

Derek huffs out an irritated breath, but he just shrugs. They’ve won fights by default before. It’s not satisfying, but it’s a win. “You should still be more careful.”

“Careful would involve leaving town.” Stiles pulls out his phone as it begins long vibrations in his pocket. Melissa’s photo lights up and screen and Stiles feels his adrenaline spike right back to where it had finally climbed down from. Derek must smell it, or hear it, because his hand immediately closes around Stiles’ nape as Stiles takes the call.

“Melissa?”

“Stiles. Did something happen?”

Stiles fidgets, his fingers immediately coming to worry at the denim of his jeans. “Yeah. Did we fix it?”

“Yes.”

Stiles closes his eyes, sagging back into the seat cushion. His chest hurts with the weight of that relief. It unfurls itself for the first time in… a long time. “Is he gonna be okay?”

“Yeah. You can expect a call from the legal department, though. The best the doctors can tell, the medication they were giving him had to be keeping him sick because there’s nothing in his x-rays anymore to explain why he was doing so poorly.”

Bless the red tape that would keep any one department of anywhere from ever putting together all of the weird shit they see. “I promise not to sue,” he says, voice shaking a little as everything just crush down on him now that finally, finally it’s over. “Can I come pick him up?”

“Sure. I’ll have him ready to go by the time you get here.”

Stiles hangs up the phone and drops his head against Derek’s shoulder.

“Breathe,” Derek says quietly beside his ear, and Stiles lets out a wobbly breath, like he had forgotten that he needed to.

“He’s okay.”

Stiles feels Derek’s chin come to rest on top of his head. “I heard. We’ll go get my car and bring him home. Just breathe for a minute.”

“Can I… ask him if you can stay over for the weekend?” Stiles asks, voice muffled against Derek’s shoulder. “Just… to make sure they’re really gone.”

Derek’s fingers press slow circles into the nape of his neck. “Sure you can. I’ll even help you take out that doorbell.”

Stiles laughs into his shoulder and turns his face just enough to see his phone clearly.

 

[We’re coming to take you home, Dad. -SS]

 


End file.
